Below is a miscellaneous sampling of interesting quotes spanning the broad and nuanced meanings of the concept of legacy. If you are familar with other quotes about legacy, please send them to us.

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
- William Shakespeare

“You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.”
-Irving Kristol

It’s my father’s legacy. My father’s view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they’re up to.
-Jack Anderson

“The search for the Adams political legacy, on the other hand, is more like the proverbial snipe hunt. Even before one begins, the futility of the quest is signaled by the awkward realization that there is no familiar and readily available to characterize the Adams legacy. To speak of an “Adamite” or “Adamsian” tradition is to commit a verbal travesy, whereas “Jeffersonian,” and even “Madisonian,” roll of the tongue. But beyond the question of sonorous sounds, references to Adam’s political wisdom simply do not show up in the historical locations where one might reasonable expect to find them.”
-Joseph Ellis
“Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams”

“There are certain things that are fundamental to human fulfillment. The essence of these needs is captured in the phrase ‘to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy’. The need to live is our physical need for such things as food, clothing, shelter, economical-well being, health. The need to love is our social need to relate to other people, to belong, to love and to be loved. The need to learn is our mental need to develop and to grow. And the need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution.”
-Stephen R. Covey

“A man cannot leave a better legacy to the world than a well-educated family.”
-Thomas Scott

“I may be here for a short while, gone tomorrow into oblivion, or until the days come to take me away. But, in whatever part you play, be remembered as part of a legacy…of sharing dreams and changing humanity for the better. It’s that legacy that never dies”
-Anonymous

“Sadness is always the legacy of the past; regrets are pains of the memory.”
-Anonymous

“We all can’t leave a prestigious background or lots of money to visit our children, but we can leave them a legacy of love.”
-Naomi Rhode

“There’s no such thing as legacies. At least, there is a legacy, but I’ll never see it.”
-George W. Bush

“The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.”
-Benjamin Disraeli

“LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.”
-Ambrose Bierce
Devil’s Dictionary

“When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.”
-Samuel Butler

“Hypocrisy: a lie in action — the legacy of indecency.”
-Anonymous

“If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

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