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

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

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

‚Nation‘ was one that I’d have killed myself if I hadn’t written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.

Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you. I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.

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

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

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

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

Honestly, I’d love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I’m doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I’m doing.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

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.

People tell me that they are so hopeful when they see me and other children ‚school-striking,‘ and they say, ‚Oh the children are going to save us.‘ But no, we aren’t. We are too young to be able to do that. We don’t have time to wait for us to grow up and fix this in the future.

All you have in business is your reputation – so it’s very important that you keep your word.

I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.

I’ve been blessed with talents to play this game and been put on a stage to impact a lot of people. I don’t want to take that for granted.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

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

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Nutrition is so important. It can’t be stressed enough.

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.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.

The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

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.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

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.

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.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia – that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

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

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

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

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

Sometimes if you jump into something too quickly, you can screw up something that might have been good two years down the road.

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.

I feel like the thing we can do is celebrate people doing great work and create more cultural momentum and awareness that this is an important thing in the world. So when the next economic crisis hits and people are talking about where to cut from the budget, science isn’t the thing.

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

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.

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

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

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.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‚sophisticated‘ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Children make your life important.

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

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

I believe that one person can make a difference.

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