Youth
Robert David Muldoon was born to parents Jim and Amie Muldoon in Auckland in 1921.
At age five Muldoon slipped while playing on the front gate, damaging his cheek and resulting in a distinctive scar. At age eight, Muldoon's father was admitted to hospital, where he died nearly 20 years later. This left Muldoon's mother to raise him on her own. During this time Muldoon came under the strong formative influence of his fiercely intelligent, iron-willed maternal grandmother, Jerusha, a committed socialist. Though Muldoon never accepted her creed, he did develop under her influence a potent ambition, a consuming interest in politics, and an abiding respect for New Zealand's welfare state. A brilliant student at school, Muldoon won a scholarship to attend Mount Albert Grammar School from 1933 to 1936. He left school at age 15, finding work at Fletcher Construction as an arrears clerk.
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Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“If youth is a fault, it is one that one gets rid of soon enough.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)
“Where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)