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!

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

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

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.

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

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

My grandpa was a preacher.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

It’s amazing if you just listen to people. They tell you all the time things that you can do for them, without even realizing what they’re doing. I’ve learned to take notice of those things and if it’s something that I feel God wants me to do, then I try to do that to add joy to their life.

The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.

Real living is living for others.

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.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.

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.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

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

Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.

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.

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

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

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.

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

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

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

Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process.

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.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary, in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries.

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 have no private interest in the reception of my inventions by the world, having never made, nor proposed to make, the least profit by any of them.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

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 don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

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.

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

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

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.

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

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

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.

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

A faithful woman can become a devoted daughter of God – more concerned with being righteous than with being selfish, more anxious to exercise compassion than to exercise dominion, more committed to integrity than to notoriety. And she knows of her own infinite worth.

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