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

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.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

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

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.

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

My family’s lineage, we are warriors. The McGregor clan, we are warriors all through. We are famous all through the world for our fighting capabilities of all generations. So I have no doubt that’s stood to me and that led me down this path and gave me what I have.

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

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.

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.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

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.

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.

No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her.

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

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

My grandpa was a preacher.

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.

By the time I was 23 years old, I had multiple arrests.

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

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

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.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

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.

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.

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

Kitty Wells was the first and only Queen of Country Music, no matter what they call the rest of us. She was a great inspiration to me as well as every other female singer in the country music business. In addition to being a wonderful asset to country music, she was a wonderful woman.

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.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

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.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

To spend life for something which outlasts it.

Remember that no relationship is a total waste of time. You can always learn something about yourself.

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.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

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.

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.

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

I want to go down in the history books with what I’ve achieved.

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.

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.

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.‘

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

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

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

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

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

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

Edison failed 10,000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

I don’t need a successor, only willing hands to accept the torch for a new generation.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

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

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.

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.

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