Quotes About Legacy

I'm not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America—not just for the sake of future generations of Americans but for all of humankind.

There are things more important," he told me, "than getting reelected.

if Abbas had been a younger man, more intent on making his mark than protecting himself from criticism.

I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.

Faulkner reminds us, the past is never dead and buried - it is not even past.

every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes

The fuss of being president, the pomp, the press, the physical constraints—all that I could have done without. The actual work, though? The work, I loved. Even when it didn't love me back.

How appealing to common interests discounted the continuing effects of discrimination and allowed whites to avoid taking the full measure of the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and their own racial attitudes. How this left Black people with a psychic burden, expected as they were to constantly swallow legitimate anger and frustration in the name of some far-off ideal.

that it wasn't just an exercise in vanity or ambition but rather a part of an unbroken chain of progress.

forty-two presidents.

Maybe nothing would come of my Cairo speech. Maybe the dysfunction of the Middle East would play itself out regardless of what I did. Maybe the best we could hope for was to placate men like Mubarak and kill those who would try to kill us. Maybe, as the Pyramids had whispered, none of it mattered in the long run. But on the only scale that any of us can truly comprehend, the span of centuries, the actions of an American president sixty-five years earlier had set the world on a better course.

For war was contradiction, as was the history of America.

that spirit of liberty didn't extend, in the minds of the Founders, to the slaves who worked their fields, made their beds, and nursed their children.

To have that rare chance, reserved for very few, to bend history in a better direction.

When you get rid of the estate tax," he said, "you're basically handing over command of the country's resources to people who didn't earn it. It's like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games.

I dropped to the ground and swept my hand across the smooth yellow tile. Oh, Father, I cried. There was no shame in your confusion. Just as there had been no shame in your father's before you. No shame in the fear, or in the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us.

We say we value the legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions of American children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but then structure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get less and less of our time.

Looking back, I sometimes ponder the age-old question of how much difference the particular characteristics of individual leaders make in the sweep of history—whether those of us who rise to power are mere conduits for the deep, relentless currents of the times or whether we're at least partly the authors of what's to come.

I reminded myself that every president felt saddled with the previous administration's choices and mistakes, that 90 percent of the job was navigating inherited problems and unanticipated crises. Only if you did that well enough, with discipline and purpose, did you get a real shot at shaping the future.

There was no shame in your confusion. Just as there had been no shame in your father's before you. No shame in the fear, or in the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us.

persona que fue la única constante en mi vida. Gracias a mis hijas veo, día tras día, su alegría y su enorme curiosidad. No voy a intentar describir cuánto lloro aún su muerte. Sé que fue el espíritu más bondadoso y generoso que jamás he conocido y que lo mejor de mí se lo debo a ella. INTRODUCCIÓN

Every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or live up to his mistakes.

Bobby Kennedy: no era tanto lo que hacía sino lo que te hacía sentir. Que todo era posible.

Every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or live up to his mistakes. You