A Quote by Socrates

What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?
Those who challenge the law in one or another of its aspects weaken the whole legal structure of society. For one man to disobey a law he does not like is to invite others to disobey another law which he may regard as indispensable to his own livelihood - or life.
And look, we have young people in this country who are thirty years old living with their parents. We have young people in this country who don't have jobs, who graduate from college and are fed the lie of meritocracy. "You get a degree, you get a job." That's not happening. We have young people who have become the Zero Generation: zero hope, zero employment, zero possibilities. Do we really believe that this young generation is going to stand by and not take note of an economic system that - however it calls itself - has completely betrayed them?
As a young man with celebrity parents I yearned to ignore my heritage (or, more precisely, have other people ignore my famous parents) and "make it" in my chosen career entirely on my own merit (which of course never happens, you're always found out).
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
To me, the main difference between young people now and the people I was young with isn't so much style, it's the relationships they have with their parents. Their parents like them much more than ours liked us. Our parents weren't our friends. But now I see my friends on the phones with their, what, 30 - year - old kids? And they're talking about feelings.
We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control.
Almost 40% of all young adults are living with their parents. This is a 75-year high in America. Forty percent of young adults are living with their parents. I see stuff like this, and I think it's a good thing I didn't become a parent, because if that were happening to me, you wouldn't want to be my kid.
I don't know how anybody can say that who looks at what's happening to our young people and what's happening to our country, all because of guns. The NRA is putting themselves in a position where people will no longer trust them. They've been trusted in the past, but now their credibility is on the line.
When a child becomes an adult . . . the elders are fearful. And for good reason . . . not we but they are the germinators of future generations. Will they leave us behind as we did our parents? Consign us to neatly paved retirement villages? Trample us in the dust as they go flying out to their new galaxies? We had better tie them down, flagellate them, isolate them in the family cocoon, . . . indoctrinate them into the tribal laws and make sure they kneel before the power of the elders.
Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man's mind, under the general head of liberty.
The young, free to act on their initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown... The children, the young, must ask the questions that we would never think to ask, but enough trust must be re-established so that the elders will be permitted to work with them on the answers.
We too need to protect, guide, and encourage our young people, helping them to build a society worthy of their great spiritual and cultural heritage. Specifically, we need to see each child as a gift to be welcomed, cherished, and protected. And we need to care for our young people, not allowing them to be robbed of hope and condemned to life on the streets.
Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it.
While all old people have been young, no young people have been old, and this troubling fact engenders the frustration of all parents and elders, which is that while you can describe your experience, you cannot confer it.
It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.
We have such a knee-jerk reaction to our young people, not recognizing our young people carry the torch. We condemn them for their hats worn a certain way or their hoodie worn a certain way, or their pants sagging a certain way, but the reality is, we need to meet them where they stand. We need to arm them with what they need to fight, and then we need to get the hell out the way and let them lead. That is something that is not happening in our communities.
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