Quotes from The Greatest Generation

“A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility ”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“there on the beaches of Normandy I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives were laced with the markings of greatness.”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels--all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25]”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“sacrifices. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“When the war ended, more than twelve million men and women put their uniforms aside and returned to civilian life. They went back to work at their old jobs or started small businesses; they became big-city cops and firemen; they finished their degrees or enrolled in college for the first time; they became schoolteachers,”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“Broderick’s unit shipped out to England as replacements for the 82nd Airborne men lost in the Normandy”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“The D-Day fortieth-anniversary project awakened my earliest memories. Between the ages of three and five I lived on an Army base in western South Dakota and spent a good deal of my time outdoors in a tiny helmet, shooting stick guns at imaginary German and Japanese soldiers. My father, Red Brokaw, then in his early thirties, was an all-purpose Mr. Fix-It and operator of snow-plows and”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF D-Day, I was broadcasting from the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, one of the bloodiest battlefields in American history. The cemetery is at once haunting and beautiful, with 9,386 white marble headstones in long, even lines across the manicured fields of dark green, each headstone marking the death of a brave young American. The anniversary was a somber and celebratory”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“postwar America. He learned the insurance business by day and braille by night. Before long the VA found him a job with an elderly insurance broker in his neighborhood. Not too long after that, Broderick had established his own insurance”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“despair hovered over the land like a plague. They had watched their parents lose their businesses, their farms, their jobs, their hopes. They had learned to accept a future that played out one day”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“came of age in the Great Depression, when economic despair hovered over”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“walked everywhere. He hated getting rides.”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“present visitors with a tiny beaded pin of the American and Irish flags. It was a big turnout the day I was there, eighteen”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“Henry Kissinger once said of this former World War II Marine, “If I had to entrust the United States to one man, George Shultz would be my choice.” Schlesinger”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“promoted to captain and given command of a company”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“assisting in the capture of the 21st German army, which was trying to avoid the Russian troops advancing from the other direction. Ko and his”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“At one time he owned as many as three buildings divided up into rental units. It was as a landlord and as a black man who had overcome so much on his own that he came to hate the welfare system that grew so fast in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. “It just killed ambition,” according to Holmes. “I had all of these tenants who in their late twenties had never worked a day in their life. They just waited around for that government check. No incentive.”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“how to prepare a young generation to run a large, modern, and complex industrial society. Nearly”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“Nazi realm. Japan continued its brutal and genocidal war against the Chinese; and in Russia, Stalin was presiding over show trials, deporting thousands to Siberia, and summarily executing his rivals in the Communist party. The Spanish”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“he had saved his country with a pact negotiated with Hitler at Munich. He returned to England to declare, “I believe it is peace for our time . . . peace with honor.” It was neither. At home, Roosevelt was in his second term, trying to balance the continuing need for extraordinary efforts to revive the economy with what he knew was the”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility. Broderick remembers listening to an NPR broadcast and hearing an account of how two boys found a loaded gun in one of their homes. The visiting boy accidentally shot his friend. The victim’s father was on the radio, talking about suing the gun manufacturer. That got to Tom Broderick. “So,” he said, “here’s this man talking about suing and he’s not accepting responsibility for having a loaded gun in the house.” Tom knows something about personal responsibility. He’s been forced to live as a blind man for more than fifty years, and when asked about the moment when the lights were literally shot out of his eyes, he says only, “It was my fault for getting too high in the foxhole. That happens sometimes.”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“great peril abroad. Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting a limit on hours worked and a minimum wage. The federal government began a system of parity payments to farmers and subsidized foreign wheat sales. In”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

“It was the beginning of his personal crusade to make life easier for the more than forty million disabled Americans. By 1990 he had moved Congress to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that mandated changes in public buildings, accommodations, and transportation to make it easier for the disabled to function in American society. For Dole, it was his greatest legislative victory. Yet it was also a classic example of the two sides of Bob Dole. Although he was a champion of this federal directive that imposed on states and businesses rigid requirements that were costly and, in some cases, little used, he was also known for advocating a reduced role for the federal government. On”
― Tom Brokaw, quote from The Greatest Generation

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“Sometimes I couldn't figure it out, what all the living was for.”
― Jane Hamilton, quote from The Book of Ruth

“I am made to sow the thistle for wheat; the nettle for a nourishing dainty
I have planted a false oath in the earth, it has brought forth a poison tree
I have chosen the serpent for a councellor & the dog for a schoolmaster to my children
I have blotted out from light & living the dove & the nightingale
And I have caused the earthworm to beg from door to door
I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just
I have taught pale artifice to spread his nets upon the morning
My heavens are brass my earth is iron my moon a clod of clay
My sun a pestilence burning at noon & a vapor of death in night

What is the price of Experience do men buy it for a song
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath his house his wife his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the withered field where the farmer plows for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summers sun
And in the vintage & to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer
To listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filled with wine & with the marrow of lambs
It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear a dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan
To see a god on every wind & a blessing on every blast
To hear the sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies house
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, & the sickness that cuts off his children

While our olive & vine sing & laugh round our door & our children bring fruits and flowers
Then the groans & the dolor are quite forgotten & the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison, & the soldier in the field
When the shattered bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity
Thus could I sing & thus rejoice, but it is not so with me!”
― William Blake, quote from The Complete Poems

“It's like a Venn diagram of tragedy.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Once Was Lost

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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