Intergenerational Legacy Quotes

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

Every generation of Americans writes its own Constitution.

My children receive education that greatly emphasizes the fact they are part of a human group that has tradition, collective memory, and a state. I am a great believer in the need for Israel to be a Jewish state. I certainly believe my children will pass that on to their children.

Here [America] individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

I kind of - I like my life; I feel I have lots of opportunities. And my parents actually having had such high expectations for me - I would say it's the greatest gift that anyone has ever given me. I complained a lot when I was little, but that's how I feel now. And that's why I tried to do the same with my two daughters.

When I was 19, my dad got sick, and I quit college to take over his business, a coffee shop on 19th Street, below Dupont Circle in D.C. I had been working there since I was 11 years old, so it was not a stretch to think that I could do it, but my record as a teenager, in many respects, was less than stellar.

He will be an extraordinary person, that pure American, who will be standing in my place five thousand years from today. He will have what no other human being has had in just the same richness, the inheritance of all ages, all races, all cultures…. a true superman, standing on the shoulders of those from all nations and races of the earth.

The chiefs of Fiji have relevance for all our citizens not just the Fijians, they still represent stability, order and continuity. If the chiefs were diminished, the entire nation would be weakened and be vulnerable.

My mother is a poet/novelist, and my father was a pianist and cook. Both artists who colored my personality and brain in ways I'm still discovering!

Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society.

I was built up from my dad more than anyone else.

My grandmother's generation and generations before always saw beyond the horizons of their own lives and their own circumstances. They believed that opportunity created today would lead to prosperity tomorrow.

I got a job in advertising. So even though I was writing, I was always supporting myself. That's the thing that would matter for my father, who was absolutely a creature of the Great Depression.

Unlike economics, whose sole preoccupation in our finance-obsessed era is the near-term profit motive, history offers a way to place our tiny lifespans in a narrative that spans dozens of generations - perhaps even reaching into a future where capitalism is no longer our dominant form of economic organization.

We do see Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun Fat, but it's very rare to see the Chinese male actor in Hollywood movies, which is something I take great umbrage with. You know, my son is Asian. He may want to direct one day; he may want to be an actor like his father - and I want that to be open to him.

I think my performance in 'What's Love Got to Do With It' was powerful. I was so unafraid and confident. You know, it was the first mother of black Hollywood. I was Tina Turner's mama. That's what started it all. I had fallen in love right before that movie, and I had absolutely no fear in me.

I believe your children should work on their own and make a name for themselves. By doing this they become confident. My parents did this with me and I tried to do the same with my children.

I think, though, as African-American women, we are always trained to value our community even at the expense of ourselves, and so we attempt to protect the African-American community.

It dates back to my dad and my uncles. They all got permits to go to Beverly Hills High School back in the '70s and early '80s. After they finished college, they came back and became football coaches there. So I was there with a permit.

Tonight, tonight we've reached a milestone in our nation's march toward a more perfect union: the first time that a major party has nominated a woman for president. Standing here, standing here as my mother's daughter, and my daughter's mother, I'm so happy this day has come.

It is in that spirit, the spirit of '76, that I ask you to rise and join me in a toast to Chairman Mao, to Premier Chou, to the people of our two countries, and to the hope of our children that peace and harmony can be the legacy of our generation to theirs.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..

The Negro is essentially the child of the moment and his memory, both tribal and individual, is very short

You were not supposed to show off in Negroland because you are supposed to be perfectly decorous and well behaved. You were also not supposed to tell any stories that reflected badly on the group because that reflected badly on the race. I use past tense, but it still feels like present tense.

I was born at home in rural Kentucky, in 1942, in a house that my father Howard had built. He did most of the construction himself and built it on land that his father had given him when he married my mother Faye.