A Quote by Ben Stein
My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well.
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Indonesian people are living in constant fear, in horror. Often they do not realize it, because this state of mind, this 'living in fear', is considered 'biasa'. This fear, also explains why almost nobody rebels, or is willing to start a rebellion against the regime. People are paralyzed by an abstract fear, which actually has its roots in ignorance and insecurity.
My parents, like others of "The Greatest Generation" who lived through the Great Depression and World War II, wanted to provide the best possible life for their children. My mother and father both attended college but dropped out to earn a living during the Depression, working the rest of their lives at blue-collar work.
I think people, unfortunately, do live in constant fear. I think the government - and people in general - create scenarios people fear, because ultimately through fear you can control people. I wish we could live in a world where there would be no fear, but it's a driving force in many decisions people make these days, whether it's personal, economic, or even job-related. A lot of people stay out of fear in a job they hate.
My parents knew a wider range of people than most, and so we had actors, journalists, politicians, planters, sportsmen and women and business folk all coming in and out of the places we lived in. Although my parents were not wealthy, they lived a legendary and amazingly cosmopolitan life.
The invention that most people know me for is the Super Soaker water gun. I knew the gun worked well, and I knew it would be successful. I did not realize how successful it would be.
My parents were not professionals. They were products of the Depression.
My parents came from an environment where everyone knew that the way to be successful was to get a great education, and that was going to be your ticket in life. If you could succeed in education then you would succeed in life, so that was sort of the driving force behind my parents' upbringing, and therefore kind of how they brought me up.
All of our family holidays were always work trips for my parents, so my sister and I would sit somewhere or find a kids' club while my parents would be interviewing people.
You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need. We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.
My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits were the motivation.
Room 40 knew a U-boat was heading south to Liverpool - knew the boat's history; knew that it was now somewhere in the North Atlantic under orders to sink troop transports and any other British vessel it encountered; and knew as well that the submarine was armed with enough shells and torpedoes to sink a dozen ships.
I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference.
That is like in my parents' generation, Walter Cronkite. If you were gonna go into broadcasting, if you weren't gonna be Walter Cronkite, you may as well not go into it. Even after I'd try and tell my parents that he was the epitome of left-wing bias. Well, my dad knew it. My grandfather wouldn't believe it.
My generation didn`t face the kind of urgent, pressing issues that my parents did, who fought through a war and a Depression and know what suffering is. That`s why Bob Dole had a tough time with this electorate. He was an old-fashioned curmudgeon who knew about sacrifice, and we didn`t know if we could live up to his standards. But we knew we could live up to Bill Clinton`s. He`s more like one of us.
A state does not simply fall apart as a result of depression... [Weimar Germany] was not destroyed by economic depression or widespread unemployment, though these naturally contributed to the atmosphere of doom, but because the Weimar Right was resolved to abolish the parliamentary state in favour of a vaguely conceived authoritarian state.
There was a generation of kids who were just kind of emulating distant heroes and wearing peace symbols, and parents who were thinking of themselves as liberal and removed from barbarity, but it also was the era of Vietnam. I very much was influenced - and I think the whole country was kind of in a state of shock - for the first time seeing the horror and cruelty of war.
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