1,138 Legacy Quotes

Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.

I do not intend to spare myself, not to avoid emotions or difficulties. I don't care much whether I live a longer or shorter time: the world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt toward it, because I have walked on this earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude I want to leave some souvenir.

May our children and our children's children to a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice under those glorious institutions bequeathed us by Washington and his compeers.

Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

Lucifer also has died with God, and from his ashes has arisen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.

The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

Aeneas carried his aged father on his back from the ruins of Troy and so do we all, whether we like it or not, perhaps even if we have never known them.

The man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.

In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century.

I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act.

I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.

I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.

You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.'

I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

I have the consolation of leaving your kingdom in the highest degree of glory and of reputation.

Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

Men may die, but the fabric of our free institutions remains unshaken.

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue.

If it turns out that physical death truly results in the absolute cessation of consciousness, then it would seem to me that in the grand truth of things, every human who has ever lived, who has not committed every minute of their lives toward an effort in finding a cure for mortality, has died as an utter and miserable failure.

We pay for the mistakes of our ancestors, and it seems only fair that they should leave us the money to pay with.

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.

Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.

The booby father craves a booby son, And by Heaven's blessing thinks himself undone.

Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps; And pyramids are pyramids in vales. Each man makes his own stature, builds himself. Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids; Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall.

'Tell them I've had a wonderful life' (p. 579)

Tell them I've had a wonderful life.

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

'No one is like the Emperor of Abhinaya- Mani Madhava Chakyar, and there won't be any' - Prof. Maria Christopher Byrski (first foreigner disciple of Guru and Kutiyattam), Department of Indology, Warsaw University[8]

Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his death, whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of the individual names or not. There is no such thing as death according to our view!

The glorious years of discovery in radio astronomy in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge were dominated by the personality of Martin Ryle.

Our First Lady of letters.

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

Muhammad was a great man, fearless soldier; with a handful of men he triumphed at the battle of Badr, great captain, eloquent, a great man of state, it regenerated his homeland, and created in the middle of the deserts of Arabia a new people and a new power.

Waterloo will wipe out the memory of my forty victories; but that which nothing can wipe out is my Civil Code. That will live forever.

Immortality is the best recollection one leaves.

Greatness is nothing unless it be lasting.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

I feel as if I am being driven towards an unknown goal. As soon as it is attained and there will no longer be any use for me, an atom will be sufficient to annihilate me; but until then, all human efforts whether in Paris or in the army will be powerless to prevail against me.

It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr.

Speeches pass away, but acts remain.

Such work as mine is not done twice in a century. I saved the Revolution as it lay dying, I have cleansed it of its crimes and have held it up to the people shining with fame. I inspired France and Europe with new ideas which will never be forgotten.

Let it never be said by future generations that indifference, cynicism or selfishness made us fail to live up to the ideals of humanism which the Nobel Peace Prize encapsulates. Let the strivings of us all, prove Martin Luther King Jr. to have been correct, when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war. Let the efforts of us all, prove that he was not a mere dreamer when he spoke of the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace being more precious than diamonds or silver or gold. Let a new age dawn!

The names of those who were incarcerated on Robben Island is a roll call of resistance fighters and democrats spanning over three centuries. If indeed this is a Cape of Good Hope, that hope owes much to the spirit of that legion of fighters and others of their calibre.

Call me a dreamer, but one day, my name will become an adjective for everything cynical and untrustworthy in human nature.

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much; Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind... Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining. And thought of convincing while they thought of dining; Though equal to all things, for all things unfit; Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.

Here lies David Garrick, describe me, who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man.

Against a tenacious enemy, this young commodore bequeathed a legacy of combat leadership to future generations of naval officers. ~ David Curtis Skaggs and Gerald T. Altoff, in A Signal Victory. (1997)

Art persists, it timelessly continues.

I kept hearing that metal is dead and Ozzy's dead and people that like Ozzy are dead. I have never had an empty seat. I've always sold out, so who's saying it's all over?

The biggest thing has been realizing how much people really do love the early Sabbath music. People have said it in the past but I've never really believed them before. I remember years ago when Metallica opened up for me, I went backstage and they were playing old Black Sabbath albums and I thought they were taking the piss! They said, 'No, we really love Sabbath.' I couldn't see that at the time--because towards the end of my time with Sabbath 20 years ago I thought what we were doing was boring and stupid, because we were boring and stupid, totally sick of what we were doing and totally out of our brains with drink or drugs when we were playing it.

I've been dictating to my son, who's helping me on his computer. I'm spending a lot of time doing research--I've just got up to 1971, when I went crazy and dived through the window. My life is so full of interesting stories...

I'm the guy kids love and parents hate. The guy mothers love to hate. When you've achieved that, you've achieved a goal.

Had he lived, I truly believe he'd have been one of the greatest guitar players that ever walked the earth. He was when he was here.

All I ever made was made for the present and in the hope it will always remain in the present.

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

I hope we'll be able to solve these problems before we leave. And when I say 'before we leave', I mean 'before we die'.

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.

Writer X may sell 500,000 copies. All those 500,000 people may think, nice book. I liked it. I'll read the guy's next one. And 40,000 people may read a Phil Dick book, and be loud and vocal and persuasive about feeling the book had incredible impact on them intellectually and emotionally. The guy with the 500,000 will not be seen as a major writer and the guy with the 40,000 will. Because nobody's talking about the guy with the 500,000 readers.

Hard-hearted minds relent and rigor's tears abound, And envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault was found. Knowledge her light hath lost, valor hath slain her knight, Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la chandelle, Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant, Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous emerveillant: 'Ronsard me celebrait du temps que j'etais belle.'

'To share responsibility with the people of the province should be, in my view, the proudest bequest of a chief to his people.'

'For me, as prisoner number LB32/05 at Vaturekuka, is something I will live with for the rest of my life, without any regret or shame because I do not only believe, but I know, and I repeat I know, that what I did then was right because if I did not do anything then, part of my people who were soldiers at the Sukanaivalu Barracks then would have been dead.'

'A great and noble man ... whose foresight and vision still impacts on our future.' (Ratu Josefa Iloilo, President of Fiji; 2003)

Music has been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to leave my mark, leave something musically good behind.

No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard. Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide!

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word.'

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

Of all the candidates so far declared, only Paul can credibly lay claim to the legacy of the Reagan-Goldwater revolution.

Everyone has heard of the Ford cars. But have they all heard of Henry Ford, who started it all? Walt Disney World is in memory of the man who started it all, so people will know his name as long as Walt Disney World is here.

Walt Disney World is tribute to the philosophy and life of Walter Elias Disney... and to the talents, the dedication, and the loyalty of the entire Disney organization that made Walt Disney's dream come true. May Walt Disney World bring Joy and Inspiration and New Knowledge to all who come to this happy place... a Magic Kingdom where the young at heart of all ages can laugh and play and learn -- together.

Thanks to the directors for addressing this message to my home. Written several minutes before my death.

People don't forget, do they?

The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart; Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart.

If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.

'Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high 'The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die - 'The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!' And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone.

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it - lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew!

You talk a great deal about building a better world for your children, but when you are young you can no more envision a world inherited by your children than you can conceive of dying. The society you mold, you mold for yourself. It was this way with my generation. We were unhappy with what we inherited and we tried to reshape it in ways that would make it more tolerable to us. You were not uppermost in our thoughts. Now, in middle age, some of us are trying to rewrite history. Some of us tell you, 'We labored and dared and sacrificed - all for you - yet we hear no thanks.' You will not be unduly moved, I hope, by these laments. They are sentimental cries from persons so attached to the society they have rebuilt that they cannot bear the thought of seeing it overhauled by new proprietors.

My dreams are over, I have ceased to cry Against the fate that made men love my mouth And left their spirits all too deaf to hear The little songs that echoed through my soul. I have no anger now. The dreams are done; Yet since the Greeks and Trojans would not see Aught but my body's fairness, till the end, In all the islands set in all the seas, And all the lands that lie beneath the sun, Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep, Men's lives shall waste with longing after me, For I shall be the sum of their desire, The whole of beauty, never seen again.

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, 'I will always be here.'

Each life makes its own imitation of immortality.