Part of the American ethos is that you want to leave something better for your kids than you had and I know that my parents felt that way and I know that my grandparents felt that way and everybody worked hard so that their kids had a better chance. I just don't want to be the first generation that doesn't do that.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the desire to improve opportunities for future generations.
In this quote, Matt Damon reflects on the American ideal of striving to provide a better life for one's children than what one has experienced. He expresses a deep-rooted belief, shared by his ancestors, that hard work and dedication should lead to improved chances for the next generation, and he feels a strong responsibility not to let that legacy diminish.
In practice
In a graduation speech highlighting the importance of family values and personal responsibility.
Some people get into this business and they're so afraid to lose anything. They try to protect their position like clinging to a beachhead. These actors end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I'm going down swinging.
Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.
You will never solve poverty without solving water and sanitation.
Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage
It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.
If I had a bucket list, I'd say raising my four girls to be strong, good women would be No. 1.
It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy.
Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.
Because (grandparents) are usually free to love and guide and befriend the young without having to take daily responsibility for them, they can often reach out past pride and fear of failure and close the space between generations.
My parents allowed their two sons to be individuals. My family was a wild and wonderful place, with lots of friends and neighbors visiting and talking loud and eating loud and nobody telling the children to be quiet or putting them down.
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
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