Youth

"I pray for no more youth perish before its prime; That Revenge and iron-heated War May fade with all that has gone before Into the night of time."

"Youth are diamonds in the sun, diamonds are forever."

"Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing."

"For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire, Show’d me the high white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire."

"Young men are fitter to invent, than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business;… Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and that, which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them, like an unruly horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."

"Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it."

"We are beginning to feel at home in our childhood, which the present wants to teach us to forget. ... We will steadfastly rely on young people who will find or create the forms for the time between childhood and adulthood. We are sill living in this period without these forms, without mutual support — in short: alone."

"Nothing is so hateful to the philistine as the "dreams of his youth." ... For what appeared to him in his dreams was the voice of the spirit, calling him once, as it does everyone. It is of this that youth always reminds him, eternally and ominously. That is why he is antagonistic toward youth."

"YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer."

"[sighs] You know the problem with the youth nowadays? They're YOUNG!"

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We will remember them."

"How shall I describe Youth, the time of contradictions and anomalies The fiercest radicalisms, the most dogged conservatisms, irrepressible gayety, bitter melancholy,—all these moods are equally part of that showery spring-time of life."

"In this conflict between youth and its elders, youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition. Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established,—Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the elders, it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to the institutions, customs, and ideas, and finding them stupid, inane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem. … Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic. It will not let the elders cry peace, where there is no peace. By its fierce sarcasms it keeps issues alive in the world until they are settled right. It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail."

"Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present, pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress—one might say, the only lever of progress."

"The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit should never be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine precipitate—a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It must be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas, and a keen insight into experience. To keep one’s reactions warm and true, is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and perpetual youth is salvation."

"Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away: poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene That men call age, and those who would have been Their sons, they gave their immortality."

"Every street has two sides, the shady side and the sunny. When two men shake hands and part, mark which of the two takes the sunny side; he will be the younger man of the two."

"We must encourage our youth, listen to them and help them to resolve youth issues. After all, they are our future."

"His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth, And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth."

"Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy!"

"Her years Were ripe, they might make six-and-twenty springs; But there are forms which Time to touch forbears, And turns aside his scythe to vulgar things."

"Sweet scene of my youth! Seat of Friendship and Truth, Where Love chas'd each fast-fleeting year; Loth to leave thee, I mourn'd, For a last look I turn'd, But thy spire was scarce seen through a Tear."

"Prima commendiato proficiscitur a modestia tum pietate in parentes, tum in suos benevolentia."

"When a man of forty marries a girl of twenty, it isn't her youth he's seeking but his own."

"Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes."

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more — the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort — to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires — and expires, too soon — too soon before life itself."

"We must be very careful when we give advice to younger people: sometimes they follow it!"

"Young people have taken part in remarkable political mobilisation in the last year. They have participated in global climate change strikes and demonstrations and protests against ruling elites, corruption and inequality in countries such as Algeria, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq and Libya. However, my research shows that they can be excluded from decision-making and processes. In particular, young people frequently think that their messages are devalued or ignored. Young people are often perceived as vulnerable and in need of protection. Yet they can be simultaneously viewed as dangerous, violent and uncontrollable. These views have long dominated attitudes towards youth. Moreover, popular beliefs about young people’s lack of experience and has meant that many people are ignorant about their contribution to political debate. This has also led to a failure by political leaders to acknowledge young people’s potential to bring about political change."

"Although countries are hesitant to include youth in politics, young people find alternative ways to cope with marginalisation and amplify their voices. This is apparent in the youth-led protests around the world. Young people are demanding to be leaders today, rather wait their turn in an elusive future."

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment."

"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;"

"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books."

"Whoso neglects learning in his youth, Loses the past and is dead for the future."

"The youth of humanity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies. The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld humanity. Children freed of the ignorantly founded educational traditions and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned, computer-stored and -distributed outflow of reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally verified data, shall indeed lead society to its happy egress from all misinformedly conceived, fearfully and legally imposed, and physically enforced customs of yesterday. They can lead all humanity into omnisuccessful survival as well as entrance into an utterly new era of human experience in an as-yet and ever-will-be fundamentally mysterious Universe."

"Jugend ist Trunkenheit ohne Wein."

"Even if the world progresses generally, youth will always begin at the beginning, and the epochs of the world's cultivation will be repeated in the individual."

"As I traveled, talking about these issues, I met so many young people who had lost hope. Some were depressed; some were apathetic; some were angry and violent. And when I talked to them, they all more or less felt this way because we had compromised their future and the world of tomorrow was not going to sustain their great-grandchildren."

"It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe."

"Some of the bravest political work in this country and around the world has happened because people often too young to grasp their own mortality stick their necks out. The job of the rest of us is to rise to the occasion of their bravery. The young inspire the middle-aged and old with courage, and they project our vision where it belongs, into the future."

"Younger people actually understand how it works. They don't just take what they are fed according to their preferences; they go look at other things."

"Youth around the globe saw the world being squeezed by two equal and unsavory forces. American youth had learned that it was important to stand up to both the communists and the anticommunists. The Port Huron Statement recognized that communism should be opposed: “The Soviet Union, as a system, rests on the total repression of organized opposition, as well as a vision of the future in the name of which much human life had been sacrificed, and numerous small and large denials of human dignity rationalized.” But according to the Port Huron Statement, anticommunist forces in America were more harmful than helpful. The statement cautions that “an unreasoning anti-Communism has become a major social problem.” This first started to be expressed in the 1950s with the film characters portrayed by James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Elvis Presley, and the beat generation writings of Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. But the feeling grew in the 1960s. The young invested hope in John Kennedy, largely because he too was relatively young—the second youngest president in history replacing Eisenhower, who at the time was the oldest. The inauguration of Kennedy in 1961 was the largest change of age ever at the White House, with almost thirty years’ difference between the exiting and entering presidents. But even under Kennedy, young Americans experienced the Cuban missile crisis as a terrifying experience and one that taught that people in power play with human life even if they are young and have a good sense of humor. Most of the people who arrived at college campuses in the mid-1960s had a deep resentment and distrust of any kind of authority. People in positions of authority anywhere on the political spectrum were not to be trusted. That is why there were no absolute leaders. The moment a Savio or Hayden declared himself leader, he would have lost all credibility."

"A young ticket should never be envied, they queue for the bus the same as us."

"The course of life is like the child's game – “here we go round by the rule of contrary” -- and youth, above all others, is the season of united opposites, with all its freshness and buoyancy. At no period of our existence is depression of the spirit more common or more painful. As we advance in life our duties become defined ; we act more from necessity and less from impulse ; custom takes the place of energy, and feelings, no longer powerfully excited, are proportionably quiet in re-action. But youth, balancing itself upon hope, is for ever in extremes; its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled ; and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity."

"Hard are life's early steps; and but that youth is buoyant, confident, and strong in hope, men would behold its threshold, and despair."

"Youth comes but once in a lifetime."

"We are jointly responsible for the care and raising of the young, since that they be raised is a function, ultimately, of the species."

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded."

"It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due."

"For the more paart, youthe is rebel, Un-to reson & hatith her doctryne."

"Young men soon give and soon forget affronts; Old age is slow in both."