Aging & Wisdom Quote by Abdul Kalam

Kalam’s line flatters youth, but it also quietly indicts the adults who run things. Coming from a technocrat-president who spent his life selling India on the future - satellites, missiles, national ambition - it’s less a Hallmark nod to “kids these days” than a policy argument in plain clothes: if you want a society that builds, you need minds that haven’t been trained to say no.

The phrasing is tellingly modest: “My view is...” It’s the language of a scientist in a political world, softening a provocation so it can travel. Then he stacks the claims in a casual cascade (“optimism... imagination... etc.”), as if the evidence is obvious, almost empirical. That “etc.” does work: it invites the listener to fill in the virtues youth supposedly carries, turning the audience into co-authors of the praise.

The sharper subtext sits in the last sentence: “You have less bias.” Youth isn’t presented as morally superior, just less pre-loaded. Bias here isn’t only prejudice; it’s institutional habit, careerist caution, the learned pessimism that comes from getting rewarded for repeating yesterday’s answers. Kalam is pointing to a paradox of expertise: experience can expand competence while shrinking possibility.

In context - a statesman obsessed with education and national development - the quote functions like a recruitment pitch for innovation. Trust young people not because they’re pure, but because they’re still plastic: more willing to imagine a different India, and less invested in defending the old one.