Generation

A generation is "all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively." It can also be described as, "the average period, generally considered to be about thirty years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children of their own." In kinship terminology, it is a structural term designating the parent-child relationship. It is also known as biogenesis, reproduction, or procreation in the biological sciences.

Quotes

As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. ~ Homer

• Οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
  φύλλα τὰ μέν τ' ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ' ὕλη
  τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ' ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη·
  ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἣ μὲν φύει ἣ δ' ἀπολήγει.
  • As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
    The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
    Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
    So one generation of men will grow while another dies.
  • Homer, Iliad (c. 750 BC), Book VI. 146–149 (tr. R. Lattimore); Glaucus to Diomed.

• It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.
  • Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, "Second Study” (1873).

• The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.
  • James Russell Lowell, Don Quixote. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 724–25.

• There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, speech accepting renomination for the presidency, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 27, 1936. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936, p. 235 (1938).

• Belonging to a generation is one of the lowest forms of solidarity.
  • Harold Rosenberg, "Death in the Wilderness" (1957) in Midstream 3/3, Summer 1957, p. 17. Republished in: The Tradition of the New, (1959),p. 244.

• Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future.
  • Charles Lindbergh, New York Times Magazine (23 May 1971)

• A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.
  • Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)

• In 20th-century England, an individual announcing that he was the son of God and would return after death in glory would probably attract psychiatric attention; but earlier generations might have regarded such claims as unsurprising.
  • Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus, New York: Free Press Paperbacks (1996), Chapter VII "The Jesuit and Jesus", p. 144 (1997).

External links

• Generations and Population Doublings. optusnet.com.au.
• Resources on the Generations. McCrindle.com.au.
• What is Generation Jones?. Wisegeek.com.