Quotes About Posterity

Philosophy, as Plato endowed it to posterity, is a child of defeat that simultaneously compensates for this defeat by ingeniously attacking it as the best form of defense.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn

One side will have before its eyes the blessings of the past and the hope of similar joy in the future; their thoughts will dwell less on the comparatively brief pain of battle than on what they may have to endure forever, they, their children, and all their posterity. The other side has nothing to inspire it with courage except the weak urge of greed, which fades before danger and which can never be so keen, it seems to me, that it will not be dismayed by the least drop of blood from wounds.

A man is only as rich as the number of children he fathers. After all, what else do we leave behind in this world...

A man is only as rich as the number of children he fathers. After all, what else do we leave behind in this world, Doctor?

What does a title mean to me? I do not need a title. My name, which I achieved with my own strength, is my title. I only wish that posterity would sometime confirm the fact that I have striven to achieve my program decently and honestly..

Let them look to the past, but let them also look to the future; let them look to the land of their ancestors, but let them look also to the land of their children.

People find it a great blessing if their child left behind a child.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

Chacun doit laisser quelque chose derrière soi à sa mort, disait mon grand-père. Un enfant, un livre, un tableau, une maison. (...) Quelque chose que la main a touché d'une façon ou d'une autre pour que l'âme ait un endroit où aller après la mort.

If he (John Adams) could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity – perhaps the ultimate form of control.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. (Actually appearing as "a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children" in _The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge_, published 1971)

[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children" (Prov. 13:22 NKJV). I

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

They claimed it was for the sake of their grandparents and grandchildren, but it was of course for the sake of their grandparent's grandchildren, and their grandchildren's grandparents.

doughty scrawl of his signature, a conservationist weapon, set aside for posterity (or for "the people unborn"* as he put it) over 234 million acres, almost the size of the Atlantic coast states from Maine to Florida (or equal to one out of every ten acres in the United States, including Alaska.) 54 All told, Roosevelt's acreage

For children preserve the fame of a man after his death.

I think I said that every generation had its weaklings--that that was one of the penalties of greatness--but that their failings were seldom remembered by posterity.

In actual operation Nature is cruel and merciless to men, as to all other beings. Let a tribe of human animals live a rational life, Nature will smile upon them and their posterity; but let them attempt to organize an unnatural mode of existence an equality elysium, and they will be punished even to the point of extermination.

He swallowed, aware that his mind was broadcasting echoes of itself, helpless to stop, hypnotized by the grinding, Cyclopean eye of posterity.

Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.