Posterity Quotes

“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.”
― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

“But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn
And broils roots out the work of masonry,
Nor mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till judgement that yourself arise,
You in this, and dwell in lovers eyes.”
― William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets

“The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.”
― George Orwell

“I hate posterity - it's so fond of having the last word.”
― Saki, Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches

“A thing which I regret, and which I will try to remedy some time, is that I have never in my life planted a walnut. Nobody does plant them nowadays—when you see a walnut it is almost invariably an old tree. If you plant a walnut you are planting it for your grandchildren, and who cares a damn for his grandchildren?”
― George Orwell

“It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity. ”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Black Tulip

“Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

“So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.”
― Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome

“Our mission as humans is not only to discover our fullest selves in the technium, and to find full contentment, but to expand the possibilities for others. Greater technology will selfishly unleash our talents, but it will also unselfishly unleash others: our children, and all children to come.”
― Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants

“Those who have no sense of posterity or any concern for future generations are the ones who are really dead. I mean, they are dead right now. Walking zombies.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it.”
― Irvine Welsh

“Those who live to make light,
are all connected
by the web of light we create together ..
We have only this moment to spin our section,
our story, our song ...
but the web itself lives on.”
― Shellen Lubin

“Comfort me by a solemn Assurance, that when the little Parlour in which I sit at this Instant, shall be reduced to a worse furnished Box, I shall be read, with Honour, by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“What is the end of Fame? 't is but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper,'
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.”
― Lord Byron, Don Juan

“Almost I feel the pulsebeat of the ages,
Now swift, now slow, beneath my fingertips.
The heartthrobs of the prophets and the sages
Beat through these bindings; and my quick hand slips
Old books from dusty shelves, in eager seeking
For truths the flaming tongues of the ancients tell;
For the words of wisdom that they still are speaking
As clearly as an echoing silver bell.
Here is the melody that lies forever
At the deep heart of living; here we keep
The accurate recorded discs that never
Can be quite silenced, though their makers sleep
The still deep sleep, so long as a seeker finds
The indelible imprint of their moving minds.”
― Grace Noll Crowell

“Being grateful for the shade of a tree is not nearly as honourable as planting a tree.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King
Cheops erected the first pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing
To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;
But somebody or other rummaging,
Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:
Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.”
― Lord Byron, Don Juan

“When you die, your culture takes you in, and then, if you've given enough, your place is near the centre.”
― Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning: Thirteen Talks

“The only way anyone can hope to live after death is if he leaves something that posterity can remember him for.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana

“How painful and absurd, this fantasy that your own
labors might in turn be redeemed by strangers centuries and perhaps continents away who would need to hear what you had to whisper, this delusion that you were doing anything other than babbling because you like the sounds it makes, like a child blowing bubbles into milk.”
― Ben Ehrenreich, Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time

“What glitters, lives but for the moment; what has real worth, survives for all posterity.”
― Goethe, Faust

“Our descendants deserve libraries, not barracks. They deserve to inherit a world that values both their waking lives and their dreams.”
― Courtney M. Privett, Dustlight

“Posterity does not accept half measures. If you don't want to be treated like an idiot mass, you don't have to behave like one.”
― Byron Rizzo, Polypticon, Part I: The Joint Political-Informatic Effort Project

“It's hard to think of posterities, when today is so urgent.”
― Byron Rizzo, Polypticon, Part I: The Joint Political-Informatic Effort Project

“Do not despair, my friend. Today is theirs, but the future is ours.”
― Rodman Philbrick, The Last Book in the Universe

“We can’t go back to what we were. We can only step bravely forward and build a future we’re proud to gift to our children.”
― Courtney M. Privett, Dustlight

“An old man, going a lone highway, Came at the evening, cold and gray, To a chasm, vast and deep and wide, Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim - That sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when he reached the other side, And built a bridge to span the tide.
"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting strength in building here.
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way.
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide, Why build you the bridge at the eventide?"
The builder lifted his old grey head.
"Good friend, in the path I have come," ," he said,
"There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”
― Will Allen Dromgoole, The Bridge Builder

“The artist doesn't have to concern themselves with posterity because, ultimately, the audience will decide. Our only option is to do the best we can here and now.”
― Rod Judkins, Lie like an artist: Communicate successfully by focusing on essential truths