Predecessors Quotes

• We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose in this battle.

  Benjamin E. Mays

  Battle, Liberty, Today

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  Don't speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn't walk in their shoes.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Shoes, Boots, Speak

  Donald Rumsfeld (2001). “Public Statements of Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, 2001”

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• I shall tread in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor.

  Martin Van Buren

  Example, Footsteps

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• To equal a predecessor, one must have twice they worth.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Imitation, Equal

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• As for the United States' future in Afghanistan, it will be fire and hell and total defeat, God willing, as it was for their predecessors - the Soviets and, before them, the British.

  Mohammed Omar

  Fire, America, United States

  "Mullah Omar Quoted as Saying U.S. Is Doomed", www.foxnews.com. May 17, 2002.

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• Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

  William Faulkner

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.

  Jim Morrison

  Divorce, Glowing, Names

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• In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.

  Paul Gauguin

  Art, Done, Revolutionary

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

  Paul Cezanne

  Beautiful, Artist, Study

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• We have to hate our immediate predecessors, to get free from their authority.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Hate, Generations, Literature

  "Selected Literary Criticism".

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• Visit with your predecessors from previous Administrations. They know the ropes and can help you see around some corners. Try to make original mistakes, rather than needlessly repeating theirs.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Mistake, Trying, Administration

  Donald Rumsfeld (2001). “Public Statements of Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, 2001”

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• Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do...Try to be better than yourself.

  John Steinbeck

  Dream, Writing, Excellence

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• Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.

  William Faulkner

  Inspirational, Running, Dream

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• Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Positive Thinking, Excellence

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• The authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Mean, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1828). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.278

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• Human development is a form of chronological unfairness, since late-comers are able to profit by the labors of their predecessors without paying the same price.

  Alexander Herzen

  Progress, Development, Able

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• Unrestrained automobility, hedonism, individualism, and conspicuous consumption cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. A spiritually impoverished world cannot be sustained because meaninglessness, anomie, and despair will corrode the desire to be sustained and the belief that humanity is worth sustaining. But these are the very things that distinguish the modern age from its predecessors, Genuine sustainability, in other words, will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process akin to humankind growing up to a fuller stature.

  David W. Orr

  Growing Up, Giving, Humanity

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• Every president when he is elected has to live with the pluses and minuses his predecessor leaves, which includes benefits as well as burdens.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  President, Benefits, Burden

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Pope Francis said the use of contraception could be justified in regions hit by the Zika virus; a stance that could reignite a debate over the church's prohibition of the use of condoms to stop the spread of the AIDS virus. The pope also criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as 'not Christian' for his immigration stance, and broke with his predecessors by suggesting that Catholic lawmakers are free to vote for same-sex marriage and civil unions if they want to.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Christian, Sex, Presidential

  "The Pope: Trump’s Not a ChristianThe Pope: Trump’s Not a Christian". "The Rush Limbaugh Show", www.rushlimbaugh.com. February 18, 2016.

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• On receiving from the people the sacred trust twice confided on my illustrious predecessor, and which he has discharged so faithfully and so well, I know that I can not expect to perform the arduous task with equal ability and success.

  Martin Van Buren

  People, Receiving, Tasks

  Martin Van Buren (1969). “Martin Van Buren, 1782-1862: chronology-documents-bibliographical aids”

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• [on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

  Claude Debussy

  Beautiful, Sunset, Sunrise

  Time Magazine, December 7, 1953.

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• Historical chronology, human or geological, depends... upon comparable impersonal principles. If one scribes with a stylus on a plate of wet clay two marks, the second crossing the first, another person on examining these marks can tell unambiguously which was made first and which second, because the latter event irreversibly disturbs its predecessor. In virtue of the fact that most of the rocks of the earth contain imprints of a succession of such irreversible events, an unambiguous working out of the chronological sequence of these events becomes possible.

  M. King Hubbert

  Science, Rocks, Two

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• You have ... been told that science grows like an organism. You have been told that, if we today see further than our predecessors, it is only because we stand on their shoulders. But this [Nobel Prize Presentation] is an occasion on which I should prefer to remember, not the giants upon whose shoulders we stood, but the friends with whom we stood arm in arm ... colleagues in so much of my work.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Giants, Arms

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• When the memory of one's predecessors is buried, the assumption persists that there were none and each generation of women believes itself to be faced with the burden of doing everything for the first time. And if no one ever did it beforewhy do we think we can succeed now?

  Joanna Russ

  Memories, Believe, Thinking

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• Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors.

  C. S. Lewis

  Exercise, Thought Provoking, Rebel

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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