"We were sweet, lovely people who wanted to throw out all the staid institutions who placed money and wars above all else. When you're young you think that's how life works"
About this Quote
Margot Kidder speaks with a blend of tenderness and rue, casting the idealism of her youth in a warm light while acknowledging its naivete. Calling her cohort "sweet, lovely people" pushes back against caricatures of radicals as angry or destructive. The ethos she evokes is the 1960s and early 1970s counterculture, animated by civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, and distrust of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. The target is not tradition itself but the institutions that seemed to prize profit and warfare over human lives and dignity.
The impulse to "throw out" those staid institutions conveys the youthful belief that moral clarity and collective will can flip a society like a switch. That feeling is intoxicating and, in moments, powerful; it produces marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and art that reimagines the world. Yet the second sentence lands with a sober turn: "When youre young you think thats how life works". Experience teaches that entrenched systems are resilient, that they adapt, co-opt, and outlast moments of fervor. Change becomes less about sweeping overthrow and more about unglamorous persistence, policy fights, and incremental gains that rarely satisfy the purity of the original vision.
Kidder herself embodied that arc, moving from the cultural ferment that launched her career to decades of activism that was quieter but tenacious. The reflection does not betray the ideals; it refines them. Sweetness becomes stamina, and revolt matures into strategy. There is a gentle warning here against both romanticizing and dismissing youthful passion. Without the moral fire of the young, societies rarely budge; without the patience of experience, they rarely transform. The line holds both truths at once, honoring the generational cycle in which hope rushes forward and reality pushes back, and suggesting that the work of justice lives in the friction between them.
The impulse to "throw out" those staid institutions conveys the youthful belief that moral clarity and collective will can flip a society like a switch. That feeling is intoxicating and, in moments, powerful; it produces marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and art that reimagines the world. Yet the second sentence lands with a sober turn: "When youre young you think thats how life works". Experience teaches that entrenched systems are resilient, that they adapt, co-opt, and outlast moments of fervor. Change becomes less about sweeping overthrow and more about unglamorous persistence, policy fights, and incremental gains that rarely satisfy the purity of the original vision.
Kidder herself embodied that arc, moving from the cultural ferment that launched her career to decades of activism that was quieter but tenacious. The reflection does not betray the ideals; it refines them. Sweetness becomes stamina, and revolt matures into strategy. There is a gentle warning here against both romanticizing and dismissing youthful passion. Without the moral fire of the young, societies rarely budge; without the patience of experience, they rarely transform. The line holds both truths at once, honoring the generational cycle in which hope rushes forward and reality pushes back, and suggesting that the work of justice lives in the friction between them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Youth |
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