Quotes about legacy
page 3

“I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich
but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch,
one who escapes his tutor's monologues,
and kills the day in boredom with his dogs;
nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry,
his people dying by the balcony;
the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite
no longer gets him through a single night;
his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb;
even the ladies of the court, for whom
all kings are beautiful, cannot put on
shameful enough dresses for this skeleton;
the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent
washes to cleanse the poisoned element;
even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy,
our tyrants' solace in senility,
he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food
is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

People, Food, Beauty, Dogs

“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 166 (10 September 1711)
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Books

“But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, The American Promise (1965)

Life, Parting, Effort

“I think that if we’ve done our job well and we articulate this individual’s life well, the themes inherent in that translate…It’s about legacy, about how much do we do with the time we’re given? And then there are themes that wrestle with the American character, but only in that Hamilton’s life is a rough-draft version of the arguments we still have as a country.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980) American actor and musician

On his work Hamilton in “Lin-Manuel Miranda on his Broadway smash Hamilton: 'the world freaked out'” https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/sep/25/lin-manuel-miranda-broadway-smash-hamilton-hip-hop-musical-school-of-eminem in The Guardian (2016 Sep 25)

Life, Thinking, Time, Country

“Seven decades ago, the warriors of D-day fought a sinister enemy who spoke of a thousand-year empire. In defeating that evil, they left a legacy that will last not only for a thousand years, but for all time—for as long as the soul knows of duty and honor; for as long as freedom keeps its hold on the human heart. To the men who sit behind me, and to the boys who rest in the field before me, your example will never, ever grow old. Your legend will never tire. Your spirit—brave, unyielding, and true—will never die. The blood that they spilled, the tears that they shed, the lives that they gave, the sacrifice that they made, did not just win a battle. It did not just win a war. Those who fought here won a future for our Nation. They won the survival of our civilization. And they showed us the way to love, cherish, and defend our way of life for many centuries to come. Today, as we stand together upon this sacred Earth, we pledge that our nations will forever be strong and united. We will forever be together. Our people will forever be bold. Our hearts will forever be loyal. And our children, and their children, will forever and always be free. May God bless our great veterans, may God bless our Allies, may God bless the heroes of D-day, and may God bless America. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2019, June, Remarks on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day in Colleville-sur-Mer, France

God, Soul, Time, Freedom

“Passionate servant leaders, determined to create a legacy of earthshaking transformation in their domain create/must necessarily create organizations which are … no less than Cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed … In passionate pursuit of jointly perceived soaring purpose and personal and community and client service Excellence.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

24 December 2018
Tom Peters Daily, Weekly Quote

Passion, Personality, Imagination, Communication

“That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed. … We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents… But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in human friendliness. Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity…Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your arms…. But ours is a unique position. We resist British imperialism no less than Nazism… If there is a difference, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scrutiny… Our resistance to it does not mean harm to the British people. We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field… No spoliator can compass his end without a certain degree of co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the victim…. The rulers may have our land and bodies but not our souls…. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-European races of the world. But we would never wish to end the British rule with German aid… We have found in non-violence a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world… If not the British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Letter to Hitler. 24 December 1940. Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html) 1940s

Childhood, Soul, Friendship, Success

“The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Ain't I a Woman (1981)

Women, Change

“Is the Iraqi state succeeding? I think there are some prospects for this country to be moving in the right direction. But the legacies of the past, the problems are really, really monumental… We need to deliver. Otherwise we will not be able to justify what we do in the eyes of our public. And public opinion does matter in Iraq. People speak their minds. People are engaged, are interested… Life is coming back… Every time I go out of the presidential palace in Baghdad — and I do try to go out as often as I can — I do see normalcy coming back, more and more. I do think there is a window of opportunity — it should be cherished. We’ve not had it like this for a long, long time… It’s precious, but precarious.”

Barham Salih (1960) President of Iraq

As quoted in "Iraq’s president explains why the U.S. must reengage with Baghdad" https://web.archive.org/web/20190320221430/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/20/iraqs-president-explains-why-us-must-reengage-with-baghdad/?utm_term=.400c91bdd2cf (20 March 2019), by Christian Caryl, The Washington Post 2010s

Time, Country, Past, People

“I cannot name the 8 million people who share my Israeli citizenship, I have never met most of them, and I am very unlikely ever to meet them in the future. My ability to nevertheless feel loyal to this nebulous mass is not a legacy from my hunter-gatherer ancestors, but a miracle of recent history.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Feeling, Future, People, History

“These our well-meaning but unthinking friends take their dreams for realities. That is why they are impatient of communal tangles and attribute them to communal organizations. But the solid fact is that the so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Moslems. When time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. It is safer to diagnose and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems, in India. And as it has happened in many countries under similar situation in the world the utmost that we can do under the circumstances is to form an Indian State in which none is allowed any special weightage of representation and none is paid an extra-price to buy his loyalty to the State. Mercenaries are paid and bought off, not sons of the Motherland to fight in her defence.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

V.D. Savarkar: Hindu Rashtra Darshan, quoted in part in Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p.332

Time, Country, Question, Dreams

“The average African-American family in this country making $100,000, which is, you know, decent money, actually lives in the same kind of neighborhood that the average white family making $35,000 a year lives in. That is totally tied to the legacy of enslavement and Jim Crow and the input and the idea in the mind that white people and black people are somehow deserving of different things.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations Are Not Just About Slavery But Also Centuries of Theft & Racial Terror, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

Money, Family, Country, People

“It is a huge honour to take up the role as Chair of The Elders at such a critical moment for peace, justice and human rights worldwide. Building on the powerful legacies of Archbishop Tutu and Kofi Annan, I am confident that our group’s voice can both be heard by leaders and amplify grassroots activists fighting for their rights.”

Mary Robinson (1944) Former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Mary Robinson appointed new Chair of The Elders, https://www.theelders.org/news/mary-robinson-appointed-new-chair-elders (1 November 2018)

Peace, Confidence, Justice, Self-confidence

“You didn’t do any of these things because they were necessarily good unto themselves, but because you saw them as means to shape events to serve your own ends. The entire legacy of the Matriarch is the exploitation of others like pieces in some great game.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

She laughed in his face. “You can see it that way if you like. The weak usually do, if they see it at all. But you disappoint me. Despite your study of history, you fail to understand power. It’s obvious you never will...There’s really only one choice you ever have to make in any act of creation. Will you be the instrument or the artist? If you’re only now coming to realize that you’ve been a tool all your life, there’s no one to blame for it but yourself. If you don’t like that state of affairs, then act! Impose your will upon the world and walk your own path. If you don’t, you’ll just end up being a token in someone else’s game; you’ll continue to be used as they see fit. That’s how the universe works. You don’t have to like it, but you’d do well to get used to it.”...
“No, maybe that’s the way the world looks once you’ve already decided to take your path. Or maybe it’s just you’re so jaded, or you’ve bought into your own delusions. I don’t know which, and I don’t care. Those aren’t the only choices: use of be used. There is more than being tyrant or servant. I reject both options and I reject you. You’ve been dead for centuries, Margda, it’s about time you accepted that.”
Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 38, “Loose Ends” (pp. 362-363; ellipses represent elisions of descriptive sections)

Game

“So Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir solidified their legacy as perhaps the best ice dancing team the world has ever seen.”

Scott Moir (1987) Canadian figure skater

James McCarthy, in "SPORTS TALK: Wasn’t that a lovely show North Korea put on?" http://nunavutnews.com/nunavut-news/sports-talk-wasnt-lovely-show-north-korea-put/ (26 February 2018)

World, Dance

“So Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir solidified their legacy as perhaps the best ice dancing team the world has ever seen.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

James McCarthy, in "SPORTS TALK: Wasn’t that a lovely show North Korea put on?" http://nunavutnews.com/nunavut-news/sports-talk-wasnt-lovely-show-north-korea-put/ (26 February 2018)

World, Dance

“He was a one-person movement…we will strive to keep his Sadhana (legacy) alive. He has achieved eternal peace. He was open to everyone even till his last breath.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Geeta Iyengar, his eldest daughter.
Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar passes away at 95

Personality, Peace

“An enduring legacy of Balamuralikrishna is the wider accessibility of classical kirtanas to the public. Many of his contemporaries tend to treat classical and popular music as watertight compartments.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Garimella Subramaniam in: A musical colossus http://hindu.com/2004/07/06/stories/2004070603272000.htm, The Hindu, 6 July 2004.

Music

“Rajiv Gandhi was not a great Prime Minister by any yardstick. He had his high points and his low points. He did try hard in some ways, but history will judge him not as a man who left behind a great legacy, but as someone who squandered the greatest opportunity India provided to any Prime Minister in living memory to take the country to new heights. He left the country in chaos and in self-doubt, and the economy in the dust.”

Rajiv Gandhi (1944–1991) sixth Prime Minister of India

R Jagannathan, in "Dear Priyanka, your Dad Rajiv was no angel. He let India down (2 May 2014)"

History, Country, Self-confidence, Memory

“Samuel Hartlib, a celebrated writer on husbandry in the last century, a gentleman much beloved and esteemed by Milton, in his preface to the work, commonly called his Legacy, laments greatly that no public director of husbandry was established in England By Authority; and that we had not adopted the Flemish custom of letting farms upon improvement… Cromwell, in consequence of this admirable performance, allowed Hartlib a pension of 100l.”

Walter Harte (1709–1774) poet and historian

a year ; and Hartlib afterwards, the better to fulfil the intentions of his benefactor, procured Dr. Beati's excellent annotations on the Legacy, with other valuable pieces from bis numerous correspondents.
Source: Essays on Husbandry (1764), p. 3.

Samuel Hartlib (1600–1662) German-British polymath

“She (Bhatt) has helped not only women in India but women in South Africa, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and inspired so many others to find their own way forward to overcome long legacies of inequality and unfairness. She has helped us imagine and then work toward a fairer world.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

Ela Bhatt bags Global Initiative Award

Imagination, Help, Way, World

“Premchand’s stories have a mixed legacy. Seen from a contemporary view point it is easy to see his ideal of womanhood the basis for women’s continued subordination withing the patriarchal family.”

Premchand (1880–1936) Hindi writer

Family, Women

“An Indian with a measure of European blood, she returned to India to shed her acquired skin…. She saw her country with new vision and has left a legacy of pictures simple and grand…as a tribute to the Indian countryside and its people.”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

Maic Casey in [Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-1947, http://books.google.com/books?id=krdWkzVLSbkC&pg=PA236, 2007, Reaktion Books, 978-1-86189-318-5, 45]

People, Country

“Chávez’s Marxist legacy continued under his successor, Nicolás Maduro, who watched Venezuela free fall into an economic abyss. The socialization of Venezuela resulted in a crisis where hospitals had no drugs or basic supplies, where the poverty rate went from 30 percent in 1999 to 87 percent in 2016, chronic food shortages erupted, and children and the sick began dying from malnutrition.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 140

Children, Food

“If you want to make America great again, all you have to do is to revive the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2020

Making love

“Let us rediscover the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and revive the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Malik and Rene Cassin. We owe it to ourselves and future generations. With God’s help we will build – together – a better world.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2020

God, Future, Help, Universe

“There can be no full or even adequate understanding of the systemic problems of capitalist society, of the origins and dynamics of hierarchy, and of a future rational, autonomous, ethical, and ecological society until we address the 10,000-year legacy of speciesism and the barbaric exploitation of other animals.”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Source: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014), Chapter 5 "Minding the Animals: Cognitive Ethology and the Obsolescence of Left Humanism" (p. 135)

Animals, Problem, Future, Understanding

“Trump’s legacy includes an extremist Republican Party that tries to hold on to power by flagrantly undemocratic means, and an opposition pushed toward its own version of extremism.”

George Packer (1960) American journalist and writer

A Political Obituary for Donald Trump (2020)

“Lynchings in the past have significantly shaped race relations in the present. A killing such as George Floyd’s lands on black people with a much heavier psychological weight because of lynching’s legacy. Too many white people fail to recognize this, and that needs to change. The hurt is too great, the simmering fear and anger too volatile, to bury forever. All Americans who would seek or demand a nation that is fairer to every citizen, less racist, and more peaceful have a responsibility to know this history in detail. … Confronting this ugliness would be difficult for everyone, of course, but it should be attempted. Ignorance and denial certainly have not worked, because this American wound still bleeds.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Hurt, Peace, Anger, History

“Perhaps, for the first time ever there is now a real chance to put an end to despotism and to dismantle the totalitarian order, whatever shape it may take. I trust that after all the unthinkable tragedies and tremendous losses that it has suffered, mankind will reject this legacy. It will not allow the 21st century to bring new suffering and deprivations to our children and grandchildren.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Address https://apnews.com/article/e5458697cf06bbb518a9ffafffd650e5 to the U.N. Security Council (31 January 1992) 1990s

Loss, Chance, Time, Children

“To focus on your legacy when you’re alive, is to detract from the time you could spend building it.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

Time

“People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights—this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left, and I feel much closer, ideologically, to such individuals than I do to the totalitarian liberals and Marxist-Leninists of today.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

“Reason Interview: Murray Bookchin: A controversial anarchist talks about government, the Libertarian Party, Ayn Rand, and the evolution of his own ideas” http://reason.com/archives/1979/10/01/interview-with-murray-bookchin/1, Leslee J. Newman, Reason magazine, (October 1979) pp. 34-39.

Feeling, People

“We will not shy away from engaging in the hard work to take on the damaging legacy of slavery and our treatment of Native Americans, or from doing the daily work of addressing systemic racism and violence against Black, Native, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and other communities of color.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

21 March 2021 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/21/statement-by-president-biden-on-the-international-day-for-the-elimination-of-racial-discrimination/ 2021, March 2021

Color, Communication

“I judge a man according to the legacy he left. No big names and huge monuments. All I'm looking for are the seeds that have been left, are they blooming or everything has gone in vain?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“When you are pursuing your dreams and trying to leave a legacy, you will find help.”

Ibukun Awosika (1962) Nigerian business magnate

https://punchng.com/i-live-on-the-plane-ibukun-awosika/During a Punch Newspaper Interview in 2016

Dreams, Help

“If, fourteen years ago, he had entertained secret hopes of leaving a discernible, enduring mark on the legacy of humankind, he was now fully disabused of them.”

Charles E. Gannon (1960) American novelist

Source: Fire with Fire (2013), Chapter 11 (p. 153)

Hope, Secret

“It is time that we acknowledge the legacy of systemic racism in our criminal justice system and work together to eliminate the racial disparities that endure to this day. Doing so serves all Americans.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2022, May 2022 Source: Executive Order on Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices to Enhance Public Trust and Public Safety (May 25, 2022) https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/05/25/executive-order-on-advancing-effective-accountable-policing-and-criminal-justice-practices-to-enhance-public-trust-and-public-safety/

Justice, Time

“Experience is the best legacy men could possess and never desert in life.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657.
1980s

Life, Men

“While present-day literature undeniably stands upon this legacy, it in a sense also began by rejecting that legacy.”

Yoshimi Takeuchi (1910–1977) Japanese academic

Source: What Is Modernity

Literature, Sense

Quotes about legacy page 3

Quotes about legacy
page 3