Gregory Orfalea > Quotes

“I say all this to note the paradox of that generation of Americans that spent childhood in the Depression, fought in World War II as teenagers, and as adults built the country as we know it today, for better or worse, richer or polluted, in plutonium and in health. That paradox is one of excess and selflessness. It was a generation that acted first, thought later. Ours, on the other hand, thinks almost everything into oblivion. Ours projects all, yet seems at a loss to do anything that will substantially alter what we so brilliantly project, most of which is payment for fifty years of excess since the war—chemical water, dying forests, soaring deficits, clogged arteries, rockets and bombs like hardened foam from a million panting mouths.”
― Gregory Orfalea, Messengers of the Lost Battalion: The Heroic 551st and the Turning of the Tide at th