Aging & Wisdom Quote by Sargent Shriver

Shriver’s line carries the soft reprimand of a builder looking at an unfinished scaffolding. He doesn’t flatter young people for being pure; he points out a civic design flaw: youth shows up with voltage, and institutions too often offer dim outlets. The little “alas” matters. It’s not the cynicism of someone dismissing idealism as naive; it’s the regret of someone admitting that adults - policymakers, bureaucracies, even “respectable” society - waste a renewable resource.

As a politician shaped by the New Frontier/Great Society era and the founding director of the Peace Corps, Shriver is speaking from a moment when government briefly tried to turn moral ambition into public infrastructure. The quote reads like an argument for program-making as moral responsibility: if you invite young people to believe in a better world, you can’t then give them only elections, consumerism, or abstract patriotism as channels for that belief. You have to offer work that is legible, communal, and consequential.

The subtext is also defensive in a canny way. When youth revolt or disengage, Shriver implies, don’t blame their character; check the wiring. The “we” is accusatory and inclusive at once, distributing guilt across leaders who underfund service, schools that teach compliance instead of agency, and a culture that commodifies rebellion while starving it of real leverage. It’s a quietly radical claim: idealism isn’t a phase to outgrow, it’s a public asset that demands stewardship.