Quotes About Legacy

I know that societies often have killed people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America, then, all credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine. - el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz

Fend kiling dorong leh warrata ka iteh tee.

People you never knew and never will know are gonna have their turn with what you had once in your hand. There's no news in knowin that.

Well, we're all mortal...and the old must make way for the young, otherwise there would be no promotion.

your fortune looks like the pyramids. When someone would want to tear them, he wouldn't dare to, and when he dares to, he couldn't do it.

Go to any small village anywhere in the world, and see what they remember. Everything. It's all there -- passed on like a precious piece of information, some secret imparted from one who knew to one who yearns to know. Taken good care of.

The realisation of our mortality came slowly, in dribs and drabs, until we bleakly acknowledged that everything was on loan to us for a short time—the world, our possessions, the people we knew and loved. But we could not spend our time dwelling on our mortality; we still had to behave as if the worst would not happen, for otherwise we would not do very much, we would be defeated and give up.

We are the ones who first ploughed the earth when Modise (God) made it," ran an old Setswana poem. "We were the ones who made the food. We are the ones who look after the men when they are little boys, when they are young men, and when they are old and about to die. We are always there. But we are just women, and nobody sees us.

Our possessing of our world is a temporary matter: we stamp our ownership upon our surroundings, give familiar names to the land about us, erect statues of ourselves, but all of this is swept away, so quickly, so easily. We think the world is ours for ever, but we are little more than squatters.

the past has a much bigger shadow than people believe. It's still with us in so many ways. At our side all the time, whispering into our ear.

There were three chairs on the verandah—comfortable old wooden chairs that probably dated from Protectorate days. "The British brought chairs," Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni once said. "They took chairs with them wherever they went in the world. And they left the chairs behind when they went home.

wise men are remembered, they always are.

She used the expression that the Batswana preferred: to become late. There was human sympathy here; to be dead is to be nothing, to be finished. The expression is far too final, too disruptive of the bonds that bind us to one another, bonds that survive the demise of one person. A late father is still your father, even though he is not there; a dead father sounds as if he has nothing further to do--he is finished.

We were not the first people to tread where we now trod; countless ancestors had come exactly this way. And although their footprints might have been blown away by the wind, we could sense their presence if only we opened our eyes and ears to it. And we could hear their voices, too, if we listened hard enough. We could hear their warnings, their encouragements, their advice - if only we turned our head to the wind and heard the voices, faint and distant, that the wind carried

It had given her pleasure to do things for him in his lifetime, and now it was a pleasure to do things for his memory. But the memory of a father went only so far.

That, she imagined, was because he had been given the eyes to see things, as we are given the eyes of those who have gone before us, and can see the world in the way in which they saw it.

If you lived in a house your parents lived in, then you would not have had to buy it. But the house itself represented inherited wealth, and in some eyes, that was somehow tainted.

We change the earth and our changes may only be temporary; yet the signs of what we have done may persist, as these mounds did.

Siamo quelle che per prime hanno arato la terra quando Modise (Dio) la creò» , recitava un antico poema setswana. «Noi siamo quelle che preparano il cibo. Noi siamo quelle che badano agli uomini quando sono ancora bambini, quando sono giovanotti e quando sono vecchi e in procinto di morire. Noi ci siamo sempre. Ma siamo solo donne, e nessuno ci vede.»

That was the marvelous thing about going back to one's roots; there was no need for explanation.

Society may be post-Christian, but could hardly ignore its Judeo-Christian past; we did not, after all, come from nowhere.

Non omnis moriar, said Horace's Odes—I shall not wholly die. Yes, and he was right. As long as people remembered, then death was not complete. Only if there were nobody at all left to remember would death be complete.

We must think of late people because I believe they're still with us—in a way. And so a late person can stay with you all your life, until it is your turn to become late too. And the late person doesn't want you to be miserable. A late person doesn't want you to think that your work is no use. A late person wants you to get on with life, to do things, to make good use of your time.

We do not want people thinking that we're trying to start a dynasty," he explained. "You know how you get those politicians who are sons of other politicians and grandsons of even more politicians. I do not think that is very democratic, and so I shall not be involved in this campaign, even if I fully support it