If you've been in the art world for more than eight years, you realize another generation is making the exact same work as the previous generation - but treating it like it's never been done before. It becomes very cyclical very quickly.
I love the live performances and Las Vegas. I also like making films that are being discovered by another generation. Having been a teen idol of the '60s is great because you realize you left your generation with a smile and good memories.
That which is truly human no generation learns from the one before it. No generation learns from another how to love. No generation has a shorter task assigned to it except insofar as the previous generation shirked its task and deluded itself.
Generation after generation, there is this never-ending, contemptuous, condescending attitude to the next generation or the next way of thinking: music, art, politics, whatever. And I have never been like that.
Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late.
However much one generation learns from another, it can never learn from its predecessor the genuinely human factor. In this respect every generation begins afresh. Thus no generation has learned from another how to love, no generation can begin other than at the beginning.
I inspired a new generation in the same way the previous generation inspired me. I believe that our democracy itself is very inspiring.
I think with each generation comes more opportunity. At least that's the way that I see it. I grew up in a generation that watched the birth of the internet. We all have. But I feel like I look around at the generation younger than me and it's a very opportunistic mantra.
My generation, we're so smart and opinionated, and we know the world we want to live in; we know the future we want. We're such a liberal, forward-thinking generation that's been held back by an older generation that doesn't understand it, doesn't want the world to progress quickly because of old ideologies.
Every generation thinks they are stronger than the generation before it. They think, "It can't happen to me." In the past people have died making that same mistake.
Over the course of the millennia, all these ancestors in your tree, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time-to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind?
It would have been more obvious to go into film, based on the generation before me, but the generation before them were all composers or classical musicians.
And we have done more in the two and a half years that I've been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it's ending 'don't ask, don't tell,' making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.
If you look at the first generation of wireless, it really lasted about 15 years before we went to the second generation. When we implemented the fourth generation, which allowed us to do all the smartphones and the videos, the time between that and going to the fifth generation is going to be four years.
The next generation has always been and will be better than the previous one. If it is not, then the world would not be moving forward.
Young people have traditionally skewed left through generation after generation after generation. Exceptions to that, of course. I am one. I never have been a liberal. I rebelled against my parents, but not that way. Never been a liberal. Constitutionally incapable of being a liberal. Who knows why.
Today’s generation of young people holds more power than any generation before it to make a positive impact on the world.