1950s Quotes

“Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother's generation.”

“While I'm frustrated at the amount I'm expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded - not being allowed to take things on at all.”

“I'm drawn to the 1950s for lots of reasons - everything from the fashion to the increasing sense of freedom and modernity that builds throughout the decade.”

“In the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we're supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly parents, and still stay sane.”

“Up until the 1950s the subject of the missionary movement was referred to as "missions" in the plural form. In fact, the term "missions" was first used in its current context by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century. But the International Missionary Council discussions in the 1950s on the missio- Dei convinced most that the mission of the Triune God was prior to any of the number of missions by Christians during the two millennia of church history. Consequently, since there was only one mission, the plural form has dropped out of familir usage and the singular form, "mission," has replaced it for the most part. Nevertheless, most churches and lay-persons hang on the plural missions. For that reason, and to make our point clear here, we will refer to it in this work from time to time while alerting believers to the coming change.”

“The rhetoric of ‘law and order’ was first mobilized in the late 1950s as Southern governors and law enforcement officials attempted to generate and mobilize white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights activists used direct-action tactics in an effort to force reluctant Southern States to desegregate public facilities. Southern governors and law enforcement officials often characterized these tactics as criminal and argued that the rise of the Civil Rights Movement was indicative of a breakdown of law and order. Support of civil rights legislation was derided by Southern conservatives as merely ‘rewarding lawbreakers.’ For more than a decade – from the mid 1950s until the late 1960s – conservatives systematically and strategically linked opposition to civil rights legislation to calls for law and order, arguing that Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime.”

“I had never owned a pair of jeans, and I didn't plan on it. I'm not a cowboy, a farmer, or a 1950s greaser.”

“During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures.”

“When television captured the popular imagination of the 1950s, a rash of movies satirized Hollywood while also mythologizing it.”