Barry Commoner Quotes

The game was here long before I was, and will be here long after I'm gone.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

The leaders come and go, but the people remain. Only the people are immortal

Nothing is forever, but history is forever.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

Words are the only things that last forever.

Transient bodies are only subject to destruction through their substance and not through their form, nor can the essence of their form be destroyed; in this respect, they are permanent.

Words have a longevity that I do not have.

Heavy metal is immortal, but we're not.

We're just not going anywhere. Our songs are here to stay.

We gon' be around for a long time.

Every moment is, in some ways, eternal. Once you put something into the world, it stays there.

I used to hope the things I did would work; now I hope they last.

The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.

The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

On great fields something stays.

Oh, I'll be forgotten too, don't worry.

The things we make have one supreme quality - they live longer than us. We perish, they survive; we have one life, they have many lives, and in each life they can mean different things. Which means that, while we all have one biography, they have many.

There are plenty of ruined buildings in the world but no ruined stones.

Can one end anything? A chapter, a paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on living in spite of subsequent events?

If what you create does not outlive you, then you have failed.

But I think it's important that things endure.

Victory is fleeting. Losing is forever.

Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time.

The work will stand, no matter what.