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.

Adapted from a passage in Schools of Hellas, the posthumously published dissertation of Kenneth John Freeman (1907). The original passage was a paraphrase of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. See the Quote Investigator article.

see Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service, Edited by Suzy Platt, 1989, number 195. Last line: "Evidently, the quotation is spurious." | See also this Google Answers discussion about the topic. | Somewhat similar sentiments are in (lines 961–985) of Aristophanes' The Clouds, a comedic play known for its caricature of Socrates. However, the lines are delivered by the character "Right" or "Just Discourse", not Socrates.