Quotes About Legacy

Since the shock of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's death, I have been reflecting on what made him so special. To my mind, it is simply this: Kofi Annan was both one of a kind and one of us.

November is Native American Heritage month, and a good time to honor the legacy of our ancestors, but every day we should stop to think about our country's beginning and that the United States would not exist if not for a great deal of sacrifice, blood, and tears by Indian Tribes across the country.

I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories.

If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world.

Let the living give thanks to our honored dead who have paid the ultimate sacrifice that the Constitution of the United States remains our guiding light.

The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. That is all. And in Cuba, in our America, they make much better cocktails.

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country - and we haven't seen them since.

Though it was never a goal in life, it has occurred to me that I've met six presidents of the United States. OK, I met four of them before they became president, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, No. 43.

If it hadn't been for that march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, there would be no Barack Obama as President of the United States of America.

One of the finest statesmen of the present time is also a first-class scout, and that is Mr. Roosevelt, the late President of the United States of America.

The United States of America have taken their name from the United States of the Netherlands.

I have been immeasurably honored to serve the people of Maine for nearly 40 years in public office and for the past 17 years in the United States Senate. It was incredibly difficult to decide that I would not seek a fourth term in the Senate.

Mitch McConnell has, as much as anyone, done great damage to the United States Senate as an institution that was once known as the world's greatest deliberative body.

I have every reason, despite the resentment and exasperation, to be proud. I have nothing better to be proud of than being proud of German unity.

We have defeated Gaddafi on the battlefield; now we must defeat him in our imagination. We must not allow his legacy to corrupt our dream. Let's keep focused on the true prize: unity, democracy, and the rule of law. Let's not seek revenge; that would diminish our future.

One of the greatest men to ever walk this land was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His life exemplified unity by bringing people together for the good of all. In any small way I hope to someday bring people together like Dr. King.

Lincoln was an American messiah, seemingly sent by God to save our country, our union, and our soul. He prioritized unity above all. Perhaps we should do the same.

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

Dr. King's general principles are universal. But the things he confronted took place in another era.

When you're a kid, 'Star Trek' is a slower burn. It's funny, it's entertaining, but it also has a maturity about it - which is its universal appeal, I think.

Shakespeare is universal.

Storytelling is a universal: every culture does it. There's a reason our religious books aren't simply a list of shall-and-shall-nots. Morals and teachings are contained in stories, which are studied, dissected, and passed down; we remember stories in a way we don't remember lists of facts.

But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations.

Probably I chose immortality because mortality is a universal human obsession.