Quotes About Legacy

Madiba reminds that democracy is more than just elections.

Republic for two terms

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.

My father had been a copper miner, uncles and grandfathers worked in the mines for the Union Pacific. So to me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who'd had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear.

It's not only "my work"—forgive the pompous phrase—that I bequeath to my survivors but all the mental and sensual pleasures that come with being a living human: sitting in the spring sunshine, feeling the warmth of friends, solving a difficult equation. All that will go on without me. I am content, in the time that remains, to be a transient cell in the larger human super-being.

You may think of yourself as a freestanding individual, a unique point of consciousness in the universe, but in many ways you are just subbing for absent family members or departed ancestors.

once you pack in all the Lafrenières, Borés, Macartys, Chauvins, Viellards, Boisclaires, Boisblancs, and Lebedoyere connections, even if they don't have dancing afterward—which they will

I lost a child, she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.

He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.

I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.

Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.

Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past

Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don't; but we wear it all the same

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work--that goes on, and it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children's bellies and their bright eyes. Good things don't get lost.

Plus," Tig said, "it reminds me to be patient. Seeing all these people that have passed on. I get frustrated sometimes, waiting." "For people to die?" "Yeah. To be honest. The guys in charge of everything right now are so old. They really are, Mom. Older than you. They figured out the meaning of life in, I guess, the nineteen fifties and sixties. When it looked like there would always be plenty of everything.

When your parent clocks out before you clock in, you can spend way too much of your life staring into that black hole.

A mother's unfulfilled ambitions lie heaviest on her daughters.

Isn't it awfully sad to thing that's all history amounts to, just following the next stupid fashion?

It was a true conversation. About whether our ancestors had more important lives than we do. And how they've managed to trick us, if they did not.

Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don't, but we wear it all the same. There's only one question worth asking now: How do we aim to live with it?

The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.

What a knot of history one mistake can become.