Posterity Quotes - Page 9

• the desire to enforce our own moral and spiritual criteria upon posterity is quite as strong as the desire to enforce them upon contemporaries.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Spiritual, Strong, Arrogance

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• We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Majority, Generations

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1808-1816”, p.309, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The whole of education should be designed so as to occupy a boy's free time in cultivation of his body.  He has no right to loaf about idly; but after his day's work is done, he ought to harden his young body, so that life may not find him soft when he enters it.  No one should be allowed to sin at the expense of posterity, that is, of the race.

  Adolf Hitler

  Boys, Race, Done

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• Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation td posterity? Let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

  Jonathan Swift

  Book, Omission, Authorship

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• We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry just as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Marriage, Race, Practice

  Michel de Montaigne (2003). “The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters”, Everyman's Library

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• It is not a great Xerxes army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity.

  James Russell Lowell

  Army, Greek, March

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among My Books: First [-second] series”, p.239

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• An earthly immortality belongs to a great and good character. History embalms it; it lives in its moral influence, in its authority, in its example, in the memory of the words and deeds in which it was manifested; and as every age adds to the illustrations of its efficacy, it may chance to be the best understood by a remote posterity.

  Edward Everett

  Memories, Character, Illustration

  Edward Everett (1850). “Orations and speeches on various occasions”, p.576

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• We need to understand that being an accomplice or accessory to those who seek to enslave our posterity, is no better than being the folks that are locking the chains themselves.

  Matt Shea

  Inspiring, Insightful, Insane

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• Convinced that the republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind, my prayers & efforts shall be cordially distributed to the support of that we have so happily established. It is indeed an animating thought that, while we are securing the rights of ourselves & our posterity, we are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish, like us, to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their struggles, and lead them, as it has done us, triumphantly thro' them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Prayer, War, Struggle

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.116, Rowman & Littlefield

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• There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the 'end of time,' or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it.

  Thomas Paine

  Country, Men, Age

  "Rights of Man, Part I". Book by Thomas Paine, en.wikisource.org. 1791.

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• What artists call posterity is the posterity of the work of art.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Work, Artist

  Marcel Proust (2016). “In Search of Lost Time: Or “Á la Recherche du temps perdu””, p.512, Jester House Publishing

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• We are a kind of posterity in respect to them.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Kindness, Kind

  Benjamin Franklin (1900). “The life of Benjamin Franklin”

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• If conquest does not bind posterity, so neither can compact bind it.

  Charlotte Turner Smith

  Doe, Conquest, Compact

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• A pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a faithful picture of nature, is a durable work, and is transmitted to the latest posterity. But a system, whether physical or metaphysical, commonly owes its success to its novelty; and is no sooner canvassed with impartiality than its weakness is discovered.

  David Hume

  Faithful, Age, Weakness

  David Hume (2016). “The History of England, vol. 1~6, Completed: Revision of Great Book”, p.2565, VM eBooks

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• If one looks at all closely at the middle of our own century, the events that occupy us, our customs, our achievements and even our topics of conversation, it is difficult not to see that a very remarkable change in several respects has come into our ideas; a change which, by its rapidity, seems to us to foreshadow another still greater. Time alone will tell the aim, the nature and limits of this revolution, whose inconveniences and advantages our posterity will recognize better than we can.

  Jean le Rond d'Alembert

  Ideas, Achievement, Events

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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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• The ultimate treasures on earth and in heaven are our children and our posterity.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Mother, Children, Heaven

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• I just find that there's something about looking back on interviews, whether for purposes of remembering what I said about something or if it's for posterity when I'm 75.

  Zachary Quinto

  Purpose, Interviews, Remember

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• There is a certain virtue in every good man, which night and day stirs up the mind with the stimulus of glory, and reminds it that all mention of our name will not cease at the same time with our lives, but that our fame will endure to all posterity.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Night, Names

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1856). “Select Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero”, p.146

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• There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees. It argues, I think, a sweet and generous nature to have his strong relish for the beauties of vegetation, and this friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. He who plants a tree looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity. Nothing could be less selfish than this.

  Washington Irving

  Sweet, Strong, Selfish

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• A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system of calumnity, pursued by a faction, may descend even to posterity. This principal has taken full effect on this state favorite.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Taken, Men, May

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• The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.

  William Hazlitt

  Stars, Reality, Sky

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• Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed.

  Paul Gauguin

  Waiting, Brain, Way

  Paul Gauguin (1978). “The writings of a savage”, Viking Adult

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• Every generation is a secret society and has incommunicable enthusiasms, tastes, and interests which are a mystery both to its predecessors and to posterity.

  John Jay Chapman

  Secret, Generations, Enthusiasm

  John Jay Chapman (1970). “The Collected Works of John Jay Chapman: Criticism & memoirs”

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• My brave fellows, let no sensation of satisfaction for the triumphs you have gained induce you to insult your fallen enemy. Let no shouting, no clamorous huzzaing increase their mortification. It is sufficient for us that we witness their humiliation. Posterity will huzza for us.

  George Washington

  Brave, Enemy, Satisfaction

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