“The king is gone
But he's not forgotten.
This is the story
Of a Johnny Rotten
It's better to burn out
Than it is to rust.
The king is gone
But he's not forgotten.”

"The God and His Man", Asimov's Science Fiction, 1980, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Endangered Species (1989), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Even at the age of 102 he said this as quoted in [Our Leaders, http://books.google.com/books?id=YwTh-vjSFXUC&pg=PA51, 1989, Children's Book Trust, 978-81-7011-701-8, 63]

Source: The King of Attolia

But is there less in the people of rank who live in so strange a forgetfulness of their natural condition?
Discourses on the Condition of the Great

Journal (31 December 1893)

On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below (published February 1, 1818); written in a competition with Percy Bysshe Shelley, for which Shelley wrote "Ozymandius".

Statement to a TImes reporter in 1990, as quoted in "The wit and wisdom of Boris" in Guardian Unlimited (23 April 2007)
1990s