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Comment by alexashka | Hacker News Reader

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

― Socrates

One day, fewer people will freely have children and maybe then this multi-thousand year cycle of brilliant parents complaining about their children's inadequacies will cease.

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The quote isn't real. It's from a Cambridge dissertation in 1907 attributing these attitudes to the ancients. With that said, let's assume that Socrates did say something like this. What exactly happened to Athenian democracy in the generations after the death of Socrates?

"Athens, 404 BC. The Democratic city-state has been ravaged by a long and bloody war with neighbouring Sparta. The search for scapegoats begins and Athens, liberty's beacon in the ancient world, turns its sword on its own way of life. Civil war and much bloodshed ensue. Defining moments of Greek history, culture, politics, religion and identity are debated ferociously in Athenian board rooms, back streets and battlefields. By 323 BC, less than 100 years later, Athens and the rest of Greece, not to mention a large part of the known world, has come under the control of an absolute monarch, a master of self-publicity and a model for despots for millennia to come: 'megas alexandros', Alexander the Great."

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://phys.org/news/2009-10-athenians-history.html

Are you disputing that some children grow up to be lazier and less disciplined than their parents? No? Then how is that quote relevant? m0zg complained about their very own child, not about children in general.

Wait, now I'm confused. I thought it was Abraham Lincoln that said this, not Socrates.

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