Lost Generation Quotes

• That is what you are. That's what you all are...All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.

  Gertrude Stein

  War, People, Generations

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• You are all a lost generation.

  Gertrude Stein

  Generations, Lost

  Quoted in Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926). In Stein's Everybody's Autobiography (1937), she wrote: "It was this hotel-keeper who said what it is said I said in this way. He said that every man becomes civilized between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. If he does not go through a civilizing experience at that time in his life he will not be a civilized man. And the men who went to war at eighteen missed the period of civilizing, and they could never be civilized. They were a lost

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• you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Moving, Get Away, Sun Rise

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.7, Hamilton Books

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• Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strength, Peace, Children

  Ronald Reagan (1983). “A Time for Choosing: The Speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961-1982”, Gateway Books

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• Perhaps every generation thinks of itself as a lost generation and perhaps every generation is right.

  Erica Jong

  Thinking, Generations, Lost

  Erica Jong (2006). “Fear of Fifty”, p.13, Penguin

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• You are all a lost generation," Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home. Ours was the generation that stayed up all night.

  James Thurber

  Home, Night, Gertrude

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• Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.

  Umberto Eco

  Lonely, Generations, Lost

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.88, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Ours is a lost generation, it may be, but it is more blameless than those earlier generations.

  Franz Kafka

  Generations, May, Lost

  "The Complete Stories". Book by Franz Kafka, "Investigations of a Dog", 1971.

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• Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.

  John Steinbeck

  Cities, Paris, San Francisco

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• Say a prayer for the lost generation, who spin the wheel out of desperation.

  Robbie Robertson

  Prayer, Reality, Generations

  Song: American Roulette, Album: Robbie Robertson, 1987

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• Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

  Ronald Reagan

  Veterans Day, Freedom, Our Veterans

  Labor Day Address at Liberty State Park, delivered 1 September 1980, Jersey City, New Jersey

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• Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.

  Dorothy Parker

  People, Gertrude, Generations

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• The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough.

  James Thurber

  Generations, Modern Life, Trouble

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• The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no
  opinion about things I don’t understand.

  Gertrude Stein

  Men, Differences, Understanding

  Gertrude Stein, Brenda Wineapple (2002). “Three Lives”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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• So I simply don't buy the concept of "Generation X" as the "lost generation." I see too many good kids out there, kids who are ready and willing to do the right thing, just as Jack was. Their distractions are greater, though. There's no more simple life with simple choices for the young.

  Johnny Cash

  Kids, Simple, Choices

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• All Quiet on the Western Front.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Lost Youth, Quiet

  All Quiet on the Western Front ch. 12 (1929) (translation by A. W. Wheen) See Beers 1

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• You are all a lost generation. [with credit to Gertrude Stein]

  Ernest Hemingway

  Gertrude, Generations, Credit

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• After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.

  Ron Chernow

  People, Generations, Crash

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• I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

  Nico Muhly

  Thinking, Generations, Way

  Interview with Sean Michaels, believermag.com. October 1, 2008.

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• John Clellon Holmes... and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said 'You know John, this is really a beat generation'; and he leapt up and said, 'That's it, that's right!'

  Jack Kerouac

  Thinking, Trying, Generations

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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• The thing I've been talking about with daughter is the idea of - and I'm talking about essentially in America - the possibility of, a lost generation. I've been listening to a lot of music - as a fan, as a critic, as somebody who likes to dance - but I hear, you know, within these songs and half the people I hear, these philosophies encoded and embedded in these songs.

  Saul Williams

  Daughter, Song, Philosophy

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• One thing I do find in the "lost" generation or something is a kind of abhorrence of history, you know, like it's boring, dumb, or just not interesting. I think it's terribly interesting if you can get your head around how it relates to where you're standing right here and now.

  Ani DiFranco

  Thinking, Interesting, Dumb

  "Interview: Righteous Babe Ani DiFranco". Interview by Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. September 8, 1999.

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• Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together." Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me. Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?

  Ernest Hemingway

  Thinking, Car, Together

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Sun Also Rises”, p.297, Simon and Schuster

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