One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination.

It’s hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they’re disappointed if we can’t share their surprise when they have discovered that a hen lays an egg. There’s a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but it’s not all nonsense. One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do one’s best to understand. One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life. It’s not very easy to give up one’s ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow. The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do little to resolve them.

The hardest thing in life is to face reality when you grow up being educated by myths

You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.

And then you grew up, went to school, and began to 'philosophize,' didn't you? We all go through the same thing. It seems that during adolescence a person's inner life is suddenly weakened, stripped of its natural courage. In his thinking he no longer dares stand face to face with reality or mystery; he begins to see them through the opinions of 'grown-ups,' through books and courses and professors. Still, a voice remains which is not completely muffled and which cries out every so often — every time its gag is loosened by an unexpected jolt in the routine. The voice cries out its great questioning of everything, but we stifle it again right away.

Young people are very cynical now, you know? Very cynical! They've been taught cynicism, they've been — they've been bred cynicism. So, I think it's important to give them hope and realism in the same package, you know? You can be realistic but there should be — there should be hope in it. Because hope's what we're about. If we don't have hope then we don't go on.

It's very difficult convincing the young of anything. They're born knowing so much.

When you're young you always feel that life hasn't yet begun...But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive.

When you're young you don't realize that at every age you are always in the present, and in that sense no older;

This is not philosophy, this is reality. Will you please keep in mind what's going on!

When one is young, and seventeen is very young, one lives in the present. The future, even the near future, is cloaked in unreality.

You are very familiar with western ways, but you are too young. You go everywhere to follow the big news, but the questions you ask are too simple — sometimes naïve. Understand, or not?

Ours is a decidedly non-philosophical, even anti-philosophical, age. This is not to say that we lack "philosophers," of a certain sort; indeed, we have only too many. ... While it may be the case that our age is more cerebral, more abstract, more preoccupied with brain power, with intellectual capacities and skills, than any other age in history, it remains true that we are not philosophical. Indeed, our very abstraction and preoccupation with intelligence is a sign of the "forgetfulness" of philosophy.

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realise the deadliness of principles. (Ch. 21)