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.
Thus ended the great American Civil War, which must upon the whole be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record.
Use it, enjoy it, but always handle history with care.
My father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million slave labourers in 1943. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died.
Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.
When we dwell on the enormity of the Second World War and its victims, we try to absorb all those statistics of national and ethnic tragedy. But, as a result, there is a tendency to overlook the way the war changed even the survivors' lives in ways impossible to predict.
I grew up in the shadow of the Trujillato, saw how the regime had ravaged so many families.
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