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Years Ago Quotes

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“Words can mean different things to different people. It is important to understand what people mean when they use a certain word. Let's make an example. Take the word gay. Fifty years ago, gay meant exclusively cheerfulness, lighthearted excitement, merry or bright colors. Today this word has a different meaning. You won't call a cheerful person gay because it could be understood as something else.”

“Most of us in the baby-boom generation were raised by full-time mothers. Even as recently as 14 years ago, 6 out of 10 mothers with babies were staying at home. Today that is totally reversed. Does that mean we love our children less than our mothers loved us? No, but it certainly causes a lot of guilt trips.”

“Poor people in America today (people who are officially in poverty) have a higher standard of living - in terms of medical standards, in terms of going to college, in terms of the way people live - than middle class people did thirty years ago.”

“Fifty years ago people believed, accurately, that they were entitled to seek the blue bird, whereas today they believe, mistakenly, that they're entitled to find it and take it home, in a complimentary cage with a month's supply of birdseed....Those who think they've a right to catch whatever they are free to chase, are doomed to disappointment. That's our generation in a nutshell.”

“I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. What I learned from it is that today seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly.”

“A hundred years ago-even 20 or 30 years ago-it was possible, if not always easy, to close major business by calling on and satisfying a key decision-maker. Today, every piece of business entails multiple decisions, and those decisions are virtually never made by the same person. Not only do you have to contend with multiple decisions, but the people who make those decisions may not even work in the same place.”

“Capitalism has improved the standard of living of the wage earners to an unprecedented extent. The average American family enjoys today amenities of which, only a hundred years ago, not even the richest nabobs dreamed.”

“There is no normal. What my job was a few years ago was completely different than what it is today. As soon as I have it dialed in, the company changes and the team changes and my role changes as a result. What the company needs is always evolving, and I don't get to choose what I want to do as much as I thought I would be now - which is OK. It keeps me in this position of learning new things and keeping me humble. There is always something I don't know, and I'm comfortable with that.”

“Sometime in the last 50,000 years, before 12,000 years ago, a kind of paradise came into existence. A situation in which men and women, parents and children, people and animals, human institutions and the land all were in dynamic balance and not in any primitive sense at all. Language was fully developed, poetry may have been at its climax, dance, magic, poetics, altruism, philosophy. There's no reason to think that these things were not practiced as adroitly as we practice them today and it was under the boundary dissolving influence of psilocybin.”

“I remember on Thanksgiving all the kids wanted the drumstick. There were four of us then. Well, today you can go into the supermarket and get 12 drumsticks. Years ago you couldn't do that. So I was sucking on the neck for two years. My mother told me it was the leg, and I believed it. I went to my father and said, Why is my leg always cockeyed? He said, The bird has arthritis.”

“Forty years ago, my life in music was substantially different to today. I went out every night with my guitar seeking a place to sing, a floor on which to lie, some love, some food, a lot of wine. There was no business, no gigs, no questions, no P.R., recording, life was simpler, I was poor and young and hungry. Today I am a lot more focused on The Song.”

“God's dream still remains unfulfilled. It was not fulfilled 2,000 years ago, or in the home of any religious leader or any American home, and today the Unification Church is here to pledge to fulfill that dream. We don't want to confine that fulfillment to our Church, but to expand it all over the world. Wouldn't that be the Kingdom of God on earth?”

“Fifty years ago, great schools like the University of California and the City University of New York - as well as many state colleges - were tuition free. Today college is unaffordable for many working class families. For the sake of our economy and millions of Americans, we must make higher education more affordable.”

“We are moving in exactly the wrong direction in higher education. Forty years ago, tuition in some of the great American public universities and colleges was virtually free. Today, the cost is unaffordable for many working class families. Higher education must be a right for all - not just wealthy families.”

“Technology is constantly improving our lives. Look at the cellular telephone. Just ten years ago, virtually nobody was able to get into a car crash caused by trying to steer and dial at the same time; today, people do this all the time.”

“There are times when you need to step back and realize that movie studios today are not necessarily the same things that they were many years ago. Many movie studios are international conglomerates now. They own everything from theme parks to toy companies to T-shirt companies to video companies. There's a lot of different wheels to be greased.”

“Sustainability requires that we demand enduring quality. Steve Strong has a slide presentation pointing out that much of Oxford was built 800 years ago. What are we building today that will be here 800 years from now? If something like that emerged from this recession, it would help justify the hardship so many people are currently experiencing.”

“There is no need for historical research. The war didn't take place a thousand years ago. Over a million Iranians served at one time or another in the war fronts and most of them are living ordinary lives today and are available for interviews. These stories are largely unknown in Iran and when I tell them to my friends or students they usually laugh.”

“I'm afraid what we are building today will not have the same impact and sustainability of the architecture of a 100, 500 or 1,000 years ago. The buildings of those days were miracles. We don't perform such miracles today. So we should be a little more modest. For my part, I'll be glad to show one of my buildings one day to my grandchildren and say: I'm proud of that.”

“Perseverance is my biggest lesson. When I started to get involved in environmental protection some years ago, my people did not take it seriously and they never considered it important. But today, people look at what I do and they truly recognize those efforts, and eventually they join you as "environmental activists" too!”