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You talk a great deal about building a better world for your children, but when you are young you can no more envision a world inherited by your children than you can conceive of dying. The society you mold, you mold for yourself.
It was this way with my generation. We were unhappy with what we inherited and we tried to reshape it in ways that would make it more tolerable to us. You were not uppermost in our thoughts.
Now, in middle age, some of us are trying to rewrite history. Some of us tell you, "We labored and dared and sacrificed — all for you — yet we hear no thanks."
You will not be unduly moved, I hope, by these laments. They are sentimental cries from persons so attached to the society they have rebuilt that they cannot bear the thought of seeing it overhauled by new proprietors.
--
"The Becoming Looseness of Doom" (p.79)

 

Russell Baker

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My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture.. ..or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone. THINKING FROMS – how we mold our thoughts or SPOKEN FORMS – how we shape our thoughts into words or SOCIAL SCULPTURE – how we mold and shape the world in which we live: SCULPTURE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS; EVERYONE AN ARTIST. (1979)

 

Joseph Beuys

 

Just look at the scores of thousands of housing tracts in this country, where only parents and children live. Think of the impact on these children who will grow up without close proximity to grandparents. There are certain things that a grandmammy or a granddaddy can do for a child that no one else can. It's sort of like Stardust — the relationship between grandparents and children. The lack of this for many children has to have a negative impact on society. The edges of these children are a little sharper for the lack of it. … I tell young people to go to the oldest members of their family and get as much oral history as possible. Many grandparents carry three or four generations of history in their heads but don't talk about it because they have been ignored. And when the young person starts doing this, the old are warmed to the cockles of their souls and will tell a grandchild everything they can muster.

 

Alex Haley

 

I asked all kinds of people of every age, "You know the 'I pledge allegiance…'" but before I could finish, at once they would all parrot it, the words almost always equally blurred. In every case discovered that not one teacher, ever — or anyone — had ever explained the words to any one of them. Everyone just had to learn it to say it. The Children's Story came into being that day. It was then that I realized how completely vulnerable my child's mind was — any mind for that matter — under controlled circumstances. Normally I write and rewrite and re-rewrite, but this story came quickly — almost by itself. Barely three words were changed. It pleases me greatly because it keeps asking me questions … Questions like what's the use of "I pledge allegiance" without understanding? Like why is it so easy to divert thoughts and implant others? Like what is freedom and why is it so hard to explain? The Children's Story keeps asking me all sorts of questions I cannot answer. Perhaps you can — then your children will…

 

James Clavell

 

I cannot conceive of a society in which children are not mistreated, but respected and lovingly cared for, that would develop an ideology of forgiveness for incomprehensible cruelties. This ideology is indivisible with the command "Thou shalt not be aware" [of the cruelty your parents inflicted to you] and with the repetition of that cruelty on the next generation.

 

Alice Miller

 

I didn't realize how bad my outlook on life is until I went on a press tour for Ratatouille and had to talk to children's magazines and children's TV shows. And I wasn't interviewed by adults — I was interviewed by actual smiling children. And I didn't realize until that point how desperately I depend on negativity and cynicism just to communicate with the outside world. It's pathetic. The Oswalt family crest should just be a pair of eyes rolling off to the side, a bag of Cheetos, and then the word "f**k". That would be our shield that you'd see retreating from the great battles of history. "F**k this — bows and arrows? Nobody told me anything about bows and arrows, goodbye."

 

Patton Oswalt