It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the exceptional character and achievements of a particular generation, often referring to those who lived through significant challenges.
Tom Brokaw, in this quote, refers to the generation that grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, emphasizing their resilience, unity, and accomplishments. He believes that their experiences shaped a strong societal foundation and contributed to the prosperity and stability of future generations, making them unparalleled in history.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech honoring veterans on Memorial Day.
The WWII generation shares so many common values: duty, honor, country, personal responsibility and the marriage vow " For better or for worse--it was the last generation in which, broadly speaking, marriage was a commitment and divorce was not an option
Your grandparents came of age in the Great Depression, when everyday life was about deprivation and sacrifice, when the economic conditions of the time were so grave and so unrelenting it would have been easy enough for the American dream to fade away.
While Pickstown may not be what it once was, it still is framed by the natural beauty of the ancient river, the sweep of the Great Plains, and the long, unbroken shoreline of the lake behind the dam. It gave me a 19th-century childhood in a modern mid-20th-century town, and for that I will always be grateful.
I am simply the most conspicuous part of a large, thoroughly dedicated and professional staff that extends from just behind these cameras, across this country and around the world, in too many instances, in places of grave danger and personal hardship. They're family to me.
I had good care going. I had Meredith and the family. And I didn't want to become the object of some kind of pity, most of all. I didn't want to show up on the Internet, 'Tom Brokaw has cancer.'
Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.
History was not a matter of missing minutes on the tape. I did not stand helpless before it. I hewed to the texture of collected knowledge, took faith from the solid and availing stuff of our experience. Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood -- read the speeches of Mussolini -- at least we've known the thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation. (82)
Strange as it may seem, George Washington's life has now been so minutely documented that we know far more about him than did his own friends, family, and contemporaries.
Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. For my own people, it was important to imagine him as the Great Emancipator, the Moses who led us out of slavery.
No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is.
So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade.
Stalin's machine can be started up again at only a moment's notice: the same informers, the same denunciations, the same tortures. The same universal, all-devouring terror.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.