But I’ve got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album’s worth of work as his legacy. That’s all that life allowed him.

I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

I hope when I’m dead I’ll be considered an icon, though.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

You were not created to just get by with an average, unrewarding, or unfulfilling life. God created you to leave your mark on this generation.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

I don’t believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

I want to be remembered as iconic and different.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

Soon, I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

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.

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: ‚What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.‘

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Old age is not a matter for sorrow. It is matter for thanks if we have left our work done behind us.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person’s life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader’s style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.

To spend life for something which outlasts it.

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

Liverpool is a club with a big, big, big history, and all the clubs in the world have a big history if the present is not too successful. If you have never had success, then nobody knows how it is, but in Liverpool, everybody knows how it was.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

If the American people don’t love me, their descendants will.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

They’ll forget all the rubbish when I’ve gone, and they’ll remember the football. If only one person thinks I’m the best player in the world, that’s good enough for me.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Democracy is our commitment. It is our great legacy, a legacy we simply cannot compromise. Democracy is in our DNA.

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‚Chuck Berry‘.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

We will be remembered only if we give to our younger generation a prosperous and safe India, resulting out of economic prosperity coupled with civilizational heritage.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

I used to have nightmares that they would put ‚He played Ted‘ on my tombstone.