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.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

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.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.

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.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

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

My grandfather was one of the very, very first, if not the first, Samoan wrestlers to become known on a worldwide basis.

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

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.

I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.

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

I don’t think of Kurt as ‚Kurt Cobain from Nirvana‘. I think of him as ‚Kurt‘. It’s something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

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.

My grandpa was a preacher.

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

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

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

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

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

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.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

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.

I haven’t written my own epitaph, and I’m not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple, and that it will point people not to me, but to the One I served.

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

No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

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

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

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God – my daughter to my country.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‚I used everything you gave me‘.

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

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

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.

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.

There was a time Michael Jackson couldn’t get his video on MTV because he was considered to be ‚urban.‘ The Michael Jackson. So I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break down the doors for everyone who will come after I’m gone, after I’m dead.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.

I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

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

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

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.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

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.

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