Posterity Quotes - Page 6

• It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge.

  Montgomery Schuyler

  Engineering, Bridges, Shrines

  Montgomery Schuyler (1892). “American Architecture”

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• This theory [the oxygen theory] is not as I have heard it described, that of the French chemists, it is mine (elle est la mienne); it is a property which I claim from my contemporaries and from posterity.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Science, Oxygen, Biographies

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• [The infinitely small] neither have nor can have theory; it is a dangerous instrument in the hands of beginners [ ... ] anticipating, for my part, the judgement of posterity, I would dare predict that this method will be accused one day, and rightly, of having retarded the progress of the mathematical sciences.

  Francois-Joseph Servois

  Science, Hands, Judgement

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• Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.

  William Winwood Reade

  Compassion, Sheep, Oxen

  William Winwood Reade (1892). “The Martyrdom of Man”

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• Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Death, Dying, Amusement

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• What cities, as great as this, have... promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some. The sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others... Here stood their citadel, but now grown over with weeds; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile; temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruins.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Weed, Cities, House

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 686-88, The Bee, No, IV. A City Night-Piece, 1922.

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• Our posterity will wonder about our ignorance of things so plain.

  Seneca the Younger

  Nature, Ignorance, Environmental

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• Let us regard the forests as an inheritance, given to us by nature, not to be despoiled or devastated, but to be wisely used, reverently honoured and carefully maintained. Let us regard the forests as a gift, entrusted to any of us only for transient care, to be surrendered to posterity as an unimpaired property, increased in riches and augmented in blessings, to pass as a sacred patrimony from generation to generation.

  Ferdinand von Mueller

  Blessing, Generations, Inheritance

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• Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness.

  James Madison

  Rights, Names, America

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Quentin P. Taylor, John Jay (1998). “The Essential Federalist: A New Reading of the Federalist Papers”, p.57, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.

  Thomas Paine

  Character, Names, Tree

  Thomas Paine, John Dos Passos (2008). “The Essential Thomas Paine”, p.65, Courier Corporation

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• Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone - extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy and superstition; and with one commanding characteristic - whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying or scribbling - never a gentleman.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Justice, Hypocrisy, Envy

  c.1874 Letter.

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• It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Eye, Blessing

  Thomas Jefferson (2006). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.276, Hackett Publishing

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• True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.

  Russell Kirk

  Past, Men, Humanity

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.57, Regnery Publishing

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• I have begun to feel that there is a tendency in 20th Century science to forget that there will be a 21st Century science, and indeed a 30th Century science, from which vantage points our knowledge of the universe may appear quite different than it does to us. We suffer, perhaps, from temporal provincialism, a form of arrogance that has always irritated posterity.

  J. Allen Hynek

  Arrogance, Suffering, Doe

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• We have castrated society through fear and intimidation. Its manhood exists only in combination with a feminine outward appearance. Being so neutered, the populace has become docile and easily ruled. As all geldings in nature, their thoughts are not involved with the concerns of the future and their posterity, but only with the present toil and the next meal.

  Harold Wallace Rosenthal

  Next, Toil, Meals

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• Posterity has never made the grave's embrace less cruel. It simply assuages our fear of death, because there is no better cure for out inevitable morality then the illusion of a beautiful eternity. But there is one illusion I still hold dear: that is the thought of an enlightened nation. That is the only future I still dream of.

  Yasmina Khadra

  Beautiful, Dream, Morality

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• A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.

  Salman Rushdie

  Book, Winning, Years

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• It had been happy for me if I could have lived a private life in peace and plenty, enjoying all the happiness that results from a well-tempered society founded on mutual esteem. But the injury done my country, and the chains of slavery forging for all posterity, calls me forth to defend our common rights, and repel the bold invaders of the sons of freedom.

  Nathanael Greene

  Country, Son, Rights

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• Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a Southern man apologizing for the defense we made of our inheritance. Our cause was so just, so sacred, that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again.

  Jefferson Davis

  Country, Sadness, Men

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• In Spain in the meantime, Aristotelian scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda was putting the impolitic moralizing of Las Casas into proper perspective for posterity: "Compare then the blessings enjoyed by Spaniards of prudence, genius, magnanimity, temperance, humanity, and religion with those of the little men [the Indians] in whom you will scarcely find even vestiges of humanity. . . . How can we doubt that these people - so uncivilized, so barbaric, contaminated with so many impieties and obscenities - have been justly conquered?"

  Juan Gines de Sepulveda

  Blessing, Men, People

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• The glorious memory of brave men is continually renewed; the fame of those who have performed any noble deed is never allowed to die; and the renown of those who have done good service to their country becomes a matter of common knowledge to the multitude, and part of the heritage of posterity.

  Polybius

  Country, Memories, Men

  Polybius, Friedrich Hultsch (1889). “The Histories”

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• In the age-old contest between popularity and principle, only those willing to lose for their convictions are deserving of posterity's approval.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Courage, Principles, Approval

  Remarks by President Gerald R. Ford on Receiving the 2001 Profile in Courage Award, www.jfklibrary.org. May 21, 2001.

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• There are many points in the history of an invention which the inventor himself is apt to overlook as trifling, but in which posterity never fail to take a deep interest. The progress of the human mind is never traced with such a lively interest as through the steps by which it perfects a great invention; and there is certainly no invention respecting which this minute information will be more eagerly sought after, than in the case of the steam-engine.

  David Brewster

  Creativity, Science, Mind

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• When all the other children of Adam have had the privilege of receiving the Priesthood, and of coming into the kingdom of God, and of being redeemed from the four quarters of the earth, and HAVE RECEIVED THEIR RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD, then it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity.

  Brigham Young

  Children, Earth, Four

  Brigham Young (1854). “Journal of Discourses”

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• No matter your situation, you can make family history a part of your life right now. Primary children can draw a family tree. Youth can participate in proxy baptisms. They can also help the older generation work with computers. Parents can relate stories of their lives to their posterity. Worthy adult members can hold a temple recommend and perform temple ordinances for their own kin.

  Russell M. Nelson

  Children, Tree, Parent

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