“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”
Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France
Volume iii, p. 274
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
“Posterity always degenerates till it becomes our ancestors.”
As quoted in "The Works of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford" in The Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, Vol. 27 (1798) edited by Ralph Griffiths, p. 187
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Horace Walpole33
English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig… 1717–1797Related quotes
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 1 "Before The Beginning"
“We are always doing something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 587 (20 August 1714).
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“We must strive to become good ancestors.”
Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic
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Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
River out of Eden (1995)
“The wisdom of our ancestors.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
Burke is credited by some with the first use of this phrase, in Observations on a Late Publication on Present State of the Nation (1769), p. 516; also in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) and Discussion on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (1793)
1760s
“He seems to think that posterity is a pack-horse, always ready to be loaded.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Speech in the House of Commons (3 June 1862)
1860s
John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician
From ‘A Duty to Posterity’, as contained in A Library of American Literature From the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Volume 3, ed. Edmund Clarence Stedman, C. L. Webster (1892), pp. 177-178
Boyle Roche (1736–1807) Irish politician
In a debate in the Irish House of Commons on the vote of a grant which was recommended by Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Exchequer, as one not likely to be felt burdensome for many years to come, it was observed in reply that the House had no right to load posterity with a debt for what could in no degree operate to their advantage. This quotation was Sir Boyle's response. <br class="br"> [Barrington, Jonah, Personal sketches and recollections of his own times, Chapter XVII https://archive.org/details/personalsketche06barrgoog]