A Quote by John Trumbull

As though there were a tie And obligation to posterity. We get them, bear them, breed, and nurse: What has posterity done for us. That we, lest they their rights should lose, Should trust our necks to gripe of noose?
Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity? For what has posterity ever done for us?
Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?
Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity - Posterity has done nothing for us
Convinced that the republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind, my prayers & efforts shall be cordially distributed to the support of that we have so happily established. It is indeed an animating thought that, while we are securing the rights of ourselves & our posterity, we are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish, like us, to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their struggles, and lead them, as it has done us, triumphantly thro' them.
Sir, very few people reach posterity. Who amongst us may arrive at that destination I presume not to vaticinate. Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity are not much more numerous than the planets.
I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter for themselves. I hold that the people of the slaveholding States are civilized men as well as ourselves, that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God and their posterity and not to us. It is for them to decide therefore the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits.
Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.
American society was economically ill-run in the 1980s. Our society has been on a consumption binge. If the American people had a town meeting and said, 'What do we care about posterity? Posterity hasn't done anything for us; we're going to whoop it up now,' that is a rational judgment. But nobody ever did that.
The thing with all the Founding Fathers, one of the most common words they used was 'posterity.' They were constantly referring to posterity.
How posterity will laugh at us, one way or other! If half a dozen break their necks, and balloonism is exploded, we shall be called fools for having imagined it could be brought to use: if it should be turned to account, we shall be ridiculed for having doubted.
I regard posterity as vulgar as success. I don't trust posterity. I don't think what's good is necessarily recognized in the long run. Too many good writers have disappeared.
It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publications in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning.
I charge [my sons] never to let the motives of private interest or ambition to influence them to betray, nor the terrors of poverty and disgrace, or the fear of danger or of death deter them from asserting the liberty of their country, and endeavoring to transmit to their posterity those sacred rights to which themselves were born
Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.
We must by every means humble our hearts and subdue our proud intellect, lest we should be like the contemporaries of the prophets, who looked on them only as sweet-voiced singers, and nothing more; they did not wish to fulfill their commands, they even despised, persecuted, beat and killed them; lest we should be like those, by whom 'no prophet is accepted in his own country' (Lk. 4:24).
We should transmit to posterity our abhorrence of slavery.
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