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.

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

Every person has a longing to be significant; to make a contribution; to be a part of something noble and purposeful.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.

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

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.

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.

We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing.

My problem is I am Christian, so I think other people must have success, too; it’s not about me.

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

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.

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

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

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

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.

The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what’s really happened.

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.

When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.

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.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

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.

My father always taught me that when you help other people, then God will give you double. And that’s what has really happened to me. When I have helped other people who are in need, God has helped me more.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

I’m generous. I give good tips. It’s just – the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don’t want anything. I’m not a consumer. I don’t crave objects.

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

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

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.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

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.

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.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.

People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.

The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself.

The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

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.