Intergenerational Success Quotes

Here in America, those who once had no hope will give their kids the chance at a life they always wanted for themselves. Here in America, generations of unfulfilled dreams will finally come to pass.

Like so many first generation children of Indian immigrants, I learned to believe in a dream that is as much American as it is universal: a dream of equal opportunity for all based on merit, of power concentrated not in the hands of a few at the top, but fanning across a large, educated, and civically engaged middle class.

My dad grew up basically in a hut in Taiwan without enough food to eat. And within one generation his son in America gets to do a comedy show about whatever he wants.

As Latinos become a larger part of the American whole, quietly consigning them to failure and isolation is hardly a recipe for national prosperity and stability. Whether they realize it or not, all Americans are now deeply invested in the successful integration of Latinos. Their own futures affluence and well-being might well depend on it.

I don't care what you do - baseball or politics - George W. Bush is always going to be compared to his father. I just want it to be an easy answer in 50 years - Who was the better player, me, or my kids? I want it to be my kids.

The most important business of one generation is the raising of the next generation. Nothing else you do in life will be as deeply satisfying.

I come from a family of scholars who got their Master's degrees. To my grandma - and to a lot of people - an education was a way of making it out of the worst parts of their life.

My dad was a singer in a band and neither of my parents went to college, and I ended up getting into Harvard and was the first person in my family that went to college and it happened to be Harvard.

Fathers are men who give daughters away to other men who aren't nearly good enough...so they can have grandchildren who are smarter than anybody's.

My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.

It has given me a global vantage point, being the daughter of immigrants from China, who had nothing when they came here. And now I am leading a company. It speaks to something deep in me, the concept that you don't have to start with anything.

What cannot be achieved in one lifetime will happen when one lifetime is joined to another.

I don't have a college degree, and my father didn't have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, 'My boy's got learnin'!'

I don't want to achieve less than my mum and dad.

My parents come from that immigrant culture that places a lot of emphasis on doing well scholastically. Being a comedian or an actor is such an American thing. The Iranian culture is not about dreaming. It's about taking over your father's business, falling into line.

In almost any profession, even if you're the kid of an actor, people are very supportive and want to see the next generation.

My dad's side of the family was very poor while growing up, but my dadi raised three kids, got my dad through medical school, sent my uncle to America where he wanted to work and helped my aunt become an accountant, because that's what she wanted to do.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

As my family story shows, Latinos have been a blessing for USA for many generations. The future of America depends in part on the success of the Latino community, and this opportunity is just one more signifier of that.

It was hardly their own shining abilities alone that allowed a son, two grandsons, and a son-in-law of Winston Churchill to make their way into parliament.

I am the child of Indian immigrants, both of whom have Ph.D.s and are college professors, and I'm an actor in Hollywood.

You know the AME Church has a history of empowering black people and having an international outlook. So it was the women of the church who began to give Sarah Breedlove an image of herself as something other than an illiterate washerwoman, and she wanted to make her life better, and her daughter's life better.

Every generation that comes from this family has to do better than the last.

We talk about what's important to Hispanics: education, family, creating an environment in which you can achieve what you want to achieve because there aren't going to be obstacles in your way.

My parents were just as smart as I am, just as hard working if not harder; I think my father and grandfather were probably better men, yet I've been able to accomplish things professionally that they were not able to.