Generation

A  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 terminology, it is a structural term designating the parent-child relationship. It is also known as, , or in the biological sciences.

Quotes

 * A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.
 * Robert A. Heinlein,  (1973)



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. 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.
 * Οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
 * As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
 * Homer,  (c. 750 BC), Book VI. 146–149 (tr. R. Lattimore); Glaucus to Diomed.


 * 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)


 * 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).


 * 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.


 * 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).