The Greatest Generation Quotes

“there on the beaches of Normandy I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives were laced with the markings of greatness.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility ”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels--all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25]”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“sacrifices. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“When the war ended, more than twelve million men and women put their uniforms aside and returned to civilian life. They went back to work at their old jobs or started small businesses; they became big-city cops and firemen; they finished their degrees or enrolled in college for the first time; they became schoolteachers,”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed, to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.” —From John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, January 1961 Given”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“IN A WAY no one could have anticipated at the time, the military training and discipline required to win World War II became an accelerated course in how to prepare a young generation to run a large, modern, and complex industrial society. Nearly every veteran, however painful the military experience may have been, seems to be grateful for the discipline and leadership training they were exposed to at such a formative age.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“Frank says of his dad, “He will brag about his involvement with the POWs and the VFW and the flag thing. But what I really appreciate about him is how he took care of my mother for ten years when she was really ill.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“When Kilmer got back home he married Marie immediately and the Army arranged for medical and psychiatric treatment at a prisoner-of-war rehabilitation center in Miami Beach. He was eased back into a normal life in time to use the GI Bill and attend the fall term at Creighton University in Omaha in 1946. For a young man who was proud of his high school diploma just four years earlier, this was an unexpected opportunity.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“Typically, everyone in the family went to work wherever they could. Young Lloyd sold newspapers, sacked groceries in the local market, and ran the projector at the movie theater. When he wanted to join the Boy Scouts, a county official lent him the fifty cents for the admission fee. He didn’t wear shoes in the summer so that he could have a decent pair in the winter.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“He tells another story about all that dust in those days.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“From him I learned that the men told the stories best themselves. So I told Meredith, “Whenever one of these guys comes over to say hello, just ask, ‘Where were you that day?’ You’ll hear some unbelievable stories.” And so we did, wherever we went. What we did not know at the time was that an old family friend back in our hometown of Yankton, South Dakota, had played a critical role in D-Day planning.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“postwar America. He learned the insurance business by day and braille by night. Before long the VA found him a job with an elderly insurance broker in his neighborhood. Not too long after that, Broderick had established his own insurance”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“His superiors in the Merchant Marine were astonished. Here he was, ready to go back to the security of the Merchant Marine Academy for another eighteen months of accelerated training, and he wanted to quit to join one of the most dangerous outfits in the service. His officer offered him a thirty-day furlough to think it over. Broderick said, “No, my mind’s made up.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“At one time he owned as many as three buildings divided up into rental units. It was as a landlord and as a black man who had overcome so much on his own that he came to hate the welfare system that grew so fast in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. “It just killed ambition,” according to Holmes. “I had all of these tenants who in their late twenties had never worked a day in their life. They just waited around for that government check. No incentive.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility. Broderick remembers listening to an NPR broadcast and hearing an account of how two boys found a loaded gun in one of their homes. The visiting boy accidentally shot his friend. The victim’s father was on the radio, talking about suing the gun manufacturer. That got to Tom Broderick. “So,” he said, “here’s this man talking about suing and he’s not accepting responsibility for having a loaded gun in the house.” Tom knows something about personal responsibility. He’s been forced to live as a blind man for more than fifty years, and when asked about the moment when the lights were literally shot out of his eyes, he says only, “It was my fault for getting too high in the foxhole. That happens sometimes.”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF D-Day, I was broadcasting from the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, one of the bloodiest battlefields in American history. The cemetery is at once haunting and beautiful, with 9,386 white marble headstones in long, even lines across the manicured fields of dark green, each headstone marking the death of a brave young American. The anniversary was a somber and celebratory”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“fortieth”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“up”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“fortieth-anniversary project awakened my earliest memories. Between the ages of three and five I lived on an Army base in western South Dakota and spent a good deal of my time outdoors in a tiny helmet, shooting stick guns at imaginary”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“private”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“keeps him in her”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“primitive kitchens and rudimentary laundry”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“job,”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“He tells another story about all that dust in those days. “My”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“modern”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“decorated with the”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“immediately, the Battle of Arnhem. It was a joint mission of American and British paratroopers, and their objective was to take the Nijmegen bridge to help pave the Allies’ way into Germany and to discourage any German counterattack. “We jumped at about five hundred feet because we wanted to be a low target. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. “The first”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“Tom Broderick spent seventeen weeks in basic training for the infantry in Mineral Wells, Texas, before heading to Fort Benning, Georgia, to become a member of the 82nd Airborne. When he finished his training, a captain offered him an instructor’s job and the rank of sergeant. Again Broderick refused the safer alternative, saying he wanted to stay with his outfit and go overseas. Broderick”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation

“gesture”
― Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation