Legacy Quotes

Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.

You'll never see a U-Haul behind a hearse. ... Now, I've been blessed to make hundreds of millions of dollars in my life. I can't take it with me, and neither can you. It's not how much you have but what you do with what you have.

I have done for my country and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God - my daughter to my country.

The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honourable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

I may be crucified for my beliefs and, if I am, you can say, "He died to make men free.

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

He who influences the thought of his times influences the times that follow.

Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

It's interesting that you put me in the league with those illustrious fighters [Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson], but I've proved since my career I've surpassed them as far my popularity. I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register.

What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries!

What I’ve realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children — all of our children — a better world. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?

I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.

it so often happens that, when men are convinced that they have to die, a desire to bear themselves well and to leave life's stage with dignity conquers all other sensations.

I've already become a mastodon in print - I don't see a consciousness for my kind of journalism.

I've been in 'Who's Who' and I know what's what, but it'll be the first time I ever made the dictionary.

My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.

What better way to die? It's fast and clean and you go out in a blaze of glory!

If you're making a time capsule you have to throw my album in there.

Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say "I have finished my day's work," but I cannot say "I have finished my life's work."

The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

I think the success of any school can be measured by the contribution the alumni make to our national life.

I became a lightning rod for some partisan battles. I could not be prouder of the track record we've put together. By almost every measure, the country is significantly better off than when I came in.

All I care about is making sure that I leave behind an America that is stronger, more prosperous, more stable, more secure than it was when I came into office and that's going to continue to drive me.

What seems to sell books is good word-of-mouth, not promotion tours. I'm too old to believe that media promotion of a book really matters. What matters is how it will look 100 years from now, not how many copies are sold.

The wild life of today is not ours to do with as we please. The original stock was given to us in trust for the benefit both of the present and the future. We must render an accounting of this trust to those who come after us.

The truth is that I've got all my net worth safely in Berkshire and I will never sell a share so there is no one more concerned about what happens after my death than I am.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

That's what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That's what I want Apple to be.

I had rather be defeated in a cause that will ultimately triumph than triumph in a cause that will ultimately be defeated.

No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.

You must judge a man's greatness by how much he will be missed.

You have a limited time to stay on earth. You must try to use that period for the purpose of transforming your country into what you desire it to be: a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist country. And that is a great task.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

One good thing about music, when it hits-you feel no pain. ... My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die. ... Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. ... My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

There is not enough self-consciousness about what a family can be, about what it can inherit from forbearers, and what new traditions it can start as a contributor to the community.

The fruit of your work grows on other people's trees

When I die and they come for me bury me a g.

My time has not yet come either; some are born posthumously.

Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will leave a stain.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

From this day forward until the end of the world...we in it shall be remembered...we band of brothers.

I didn't come after Elvis and Dylan, I've been around always. But if I see or meet a great artist, I love 'em.

I am the successor, not of Louis XVI, but of Charlemagne.

I shall do down in history as the man who opened a door!

Noble fathers have noble children.

Every punch I threw with bad intentions to a vital area...I aimed for his ear...I wanted to bust his eardrum...Every punch had bad intentions...My record will last for immortality, It'll never be broken...I want to live forever...I refuse to lose...I would have to be carried out dead to lose...I was coming to destroy and win the Heavyweight Championship of the World, which I done.

What is once well done is done forever.

Wouldn't it be interesting to take Elvis back to his Sun Records period? I don't know. But I'm content to listen to his Sun Records. I don't want to dig him up out of the grave.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

How many ages henceShall this our lofty scene be acted overIn states unborn and accents yet unknown!

Follow in the footsteps of your fathers' virtue! How could you hope to climb high unless your fathers' will climbs with you?

The name Roosevelt has this legendary force in our country at this time.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

I'm going to die one day. I know it's coming for me, too. I'll be a mountain, I'll be a stone on the beach. I'll be nourishment.

When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field, the next man will appear.

Brigham Young lived to become immortal in history as an American Moses by leading his people through the wilderness into an unpromised land.