Rowan Williams Quotes

We want to believe that we can continue doing what we've done for the past thousand years and not worry about the consequences coming back to us.

We cannot shirk responsibility from concerns for the welfare of the next generation.

All of us should be involved in our own futures to create a world that our children will want to live in.

Hence it is that old men do plant young trees, the fruit whereof another age shall take.

I want to be the bridge to the next generation.

We must all live so that our children do not have to pay for our deeds.

Land is not something you inherit from your parents. It is something you borrow from your children.

When you run a company, you want to hand it off in better shape than you found it. In the same way, just as we shouldn't leave our children or grandchildren with mountains of national debt and unsustainable entitlement programs, we shouldn't leave them with the economic and environmental costs of climate change.

Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children.

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?'

Are we being good ancestors?

In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, we must in turn plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will benefit the generations to come.

I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.

The World is not ours to keep. We hold it in trust for future generations.

We are too careless of posterity; not considering that as they are, so the next generation will be.

What our Seventh Generation will have is a consequence of our actions today.

I can't stomach the thought that we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less viable, less good, less competitive, less compassionate than the one we got.

Instead of passing on choppy waters to the next generation, we should endeavor to leave them a calmer sea.

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

I haven't inherited the earth from my parents, I am borrowing it from my children.

Real leadership means tackling tough problems ourselves and not leaving them to our children.

Like many dads I know, I've long been motivated in all aspects of my life by my love for my children - and my desire to make the world better a better place for them, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren.

We must strive to become good ancestors.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

It is my firm belief that I have a link with the past and a responsibility to the future. I cannot give up. I cannot despair. There's a whole future, generations to come. I have to keep trying.