Top 100 Quotes About Posterity
#1. My wife, who does not like journalizing, said it was leaving myself embowelled to posterity
a good strong figure. But I think itis rather leaving myself embalmed. It is certainly preserving myself.
James Boswell
#3. We should transmit to posterity our abhorrence of slavery.
Patrick Henry
#4. Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#5. Posterity makes the judgments. There are going to be a lot of surprises in store for everybody.
Irwin Shaw
#6. Most writers deserve the reputation posterity has bestowed upon them: You can't for long conceal the toxic spots on your character - Philip Larkin is Exhibit A - nor can you conceal your dignity, your humanism, your regard for veracity and freedom.
William Giraldi
#8. Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.
Edward Everett
#9. A writer who wishes to be read by posterity must not be averse to putting hints which might give rise to whole books, or ideas for learned discussions, in some corner of a chapter so that one should think he can afford to throw them away by the thousand.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
#10. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.
Abraham Lincoln
#11. The eyes of all America are upon us, as we play our part posterity will bless or curse us.
Henry Knox
#12. The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.
Jean Paul
#13. A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.
Mark Twain
#14. Time will unveil all things to posterity.
Euripides
#15. I thought I had to make an impact on history. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I gave it 20 years of my best shot.
Twyla Tharp
#17. It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.
Joseph Addison
#18. The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.
Tacitus
#19. Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
Denis Diderot
#20. the Times is so wrapped up in its duty to posterity it bores you to death.
Harper Lee
#21. Posterity will jump to conclusions: that is its nature.
Julian Barnes
#22. Learn to live from inside to outside, bring out those magnificent estates within you and live in them.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
#23. I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.
Orson Welles
#24. A painter leaves his emotions behind him for posterity to share.
Augustus John
#25. It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.
Robert Louis Stevenson
#26. How far you go in life and in your career is dependent on how far you can think good thoughts!
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
#27. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
#28. His conclusion, preserved for posterity, was that the experiment of interning families of suspected nationalities - German, Japanese, Italians, and others - was a failure. Nonetheless,
Jan Jarboe Russell
#29. After mature deliberation of counsel, the good Queen to establish a rule and immutable example unto all posterity, for the moderation and required modesty in a lawful marriage, ordained the number of six times a day as a lawful, necessary and competent limit.
Michel De Montaigne
#30. I regard posterity as vulgar as success. I don't trust posterity. I don't think what's good is necessarily recognized in the long run. Too many good writers have disappeared.
Peter Biskind
#31. If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two yearsof age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.
Abraham Lincoln
#32. George Washington famously warned against ... 'ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear
George Washington
#33. Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.
Robert Menzies
#34. Honor, justice, and humanity, call upon us to hold, and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children, but it is our duty to leave liberty to them.
John Dickinson
#35. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;
and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#38. The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.
Bill Vaughan
#39. It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.
Jonathan Swift
#40. All artists are vain, they long to be recognized and to leave something to posterity. They want to be loved, and at the same time they want to be free. But nobody is free.
Francis Bacon
#41. Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#42. Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times ... To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern ...
Vladimir Nabokov
#43. Religion Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew, None as invincible as they.
William Cowper
#44. In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid Nature ...
James Bryce
#47. The noblest works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the image of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them that they have no posterity.
Francis Bacon
#48. Historic figures have homes to visit for posterity; the Lord of history left no home. Luminaries leave libraries and write their memoirs; He left one book, penned by ordinary people. Deliverers speak of winning through might and conquest; He spoke of a place in the heart.
Ravi Zacharias
#49. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.
Henry David Thoreau
#50. Comfort me by a solemn Assurance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
Henry Fielding
#51. Voiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.
George Washington
#52. 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.
Daniel Webster
#53. After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to write for posterity.
George Ade
#54. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Henry David Thoreau
#55. Why not stop trying to prevent posterity being silent about you? You were born to die, and a silent funeral is less bothersome.
Seneca.
#56. One of history's secrets is that the revolutionaries appeal in the eyes of posterity owes much to the traits they share with the world they overthrew.
Christopher Caldwell
#57. Those of us in positions of responsibility, we'll need to be less concerned with the judgment of special interests and well-connected donors, and more concerned with the judgment of posterity.
Barack Obama
#58. But epidemics create a kind of history from below: they can be world-changing, but the participants are almost inevitably ordinary folk, following their established routines, not thinking for a second about how their actions will be recorded for posterity.
Steven Johnson
#59. The decision to serve a mission will shape the spiritual destiny of the missionary, his or her spouse, and their posterity for generations to come. A desire to serve is a natural outcome of one's conversion, worthiness, and preparation.
Russell M. Nelson
#61. What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.
Marcel Proust
#62. In testimony of their Respect For The Patriot of incorruptible Integrity, The Soldier of approved Valour The Statesman of consummate Wisdom; Whose Talents and Virtues will be admired By Grateful Posterity Long after this Marble shall have mouldered into Dust.
Alexander Hamilton
#63. A lioness. She mates with her lion and he thinks the moment is about him when it is really about her, her children, her posterity. Her tricki s to make him think that he is king of the bush, but what he does a king matter? Really, she is king and queen and everything in between.
Yaa Gyasi
#64. There will he nothing more that posterity can add to our immoral habits; our descendants must have the same desires and act the same follies as their sires. Every vice has reached its zenith.
Juvenal
#65. In what way will our remote posterity be able to cope with the enormous accumulation of historical records which a few centuries will bequeath to them?
Immanuel Kant
#66. Sir, very few people reach posterity. Who amongst us may arrive at that destination I presume not to vaticinate. Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity
are not much more numerous than the planets.
Benjamin Disraeli
#68. The judgment of posterity is truer, because it is free from envy and malevolence.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#69. When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people ... and ... becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression ... it is a ... sacred obligation to their posterity to abolish such government, and create another in its stead.
Sam Houston
#70. The southern colonists were not preoccupied with their own historical significance and mostly did not bother even to make the records of births, marriages, and deaths that they required of themselves by law. Nor did they write accounts of what they were up to for the benefit of posterity.
Edmund Morgan
#71. We have not yet received our kingdoms, neither will we, until we have finished our work on earth ... Then he that has overcome and is found worthy, will be made a king of kings, a lord of lords over his own posterity, or in other words: A father of fathers.
Brigham Young
#72. This American government - what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.
Henry David Thoreau
#73. Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
Euripides
#74. A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity.
Alexander Smith
#75. That bright blue ball rising over the moon's surface, containing everything we hold dear - the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity - that's what's at stake. That's what we're fighting for. And if we remember that, I'm absolutely sure we'll succeed.
Barack Obama
#76. The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.
[Lat., Majorum gloria posteris lumen est, neque bona neque mala in occulto patitur.]
Sallust
#77. Leibniz dedicated his life to efforts to educate people to understand that true happiness is found by locating their identity in benefitting mankind and their posterity.
Robert Trout
#78. Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity? For what has posterity ever done for us?
Boyle Roche
#79. Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.
William Winwood Reade
#80. I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#81. Many of these slaveholding populists were celebrated by posterity as tribunes of the common people. Meanwhile, the self-made Hamilton, a fervent abolitionist and a staunch believer in meritocracy, was villainized in American history textbooks as an apologist of privilege and wealth.
Ron Chernow
#82. The perfect critic is one ... that sees with the eyes of posterity.
Austin O'Malley
#84. Its a museum's job to keep things for posterity,"Tabitha sniffs. "We have a temperature-controlled storage unit full of Christmas sweaters.
Robin Sloan
#85. Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity.
Arundhati Roy
#86. What is the source of this premature anxiety to establish fundamental laws? It is the old conceit of being wiser than all posterity - wiser than those who will have had more experience, - the old desire of ruling over posterity - the old recipe for enabling the dead to chain down the living
Jeremy Bentham
#87. When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity.
Ben Jonson
#88. What you leave behind for posterity isn't a decision you make on your deathbed. It's a choice that happens right now with the resources available at this very moment.
Jeff Goins
#89. Faith in humanity, in posterity, in the destiny of one's religion, nation, race, party or family-what is it but the visualization of that eternal something to which we attach the self that is about to be annihilated?
Eric Hoffer
#90. Posterity does not pay off anything of the national debt. Each administration adds to the debt left to it, and the promise of liquidation implied in every bond issue is a false promise.
Frank Chodorov
#91. When a man says he is building a house for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them, to live in it.
Lysander Spooner
#92. Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
Charles Caleb Colton
#93. Those who have no sense of posterity or any concern for future generations are the ones who are really dead. I mean, they are dead right now. Walking zombies.
Edward Abbey
#94. The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.
Charles Caleb Colton
#95. And you will, by the dignity of your Conduct, afford occasion for Posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to Mankind, had this day been wanting, the World had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.
George Washington
#97. Since it is not granted to us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived.
E. Joseph Cossman
#98. May posterity show mercy when it look back upon the work we do today. We did what we could with what we had.
Mira Grant
#99. We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.
Walter Cronkite
#100. At some point in my life, before I was gone, I wanted to make an album, even if it was for no reason other than posterity.
Danny Aiello