Eric Liu Quotes

The future that I will not live to see is the one my children will live in. That's my immortality. And I shouldn't try to mortgage theirs for my benefit.

We should learn ... to do our best for the sake of our communities and for the sake of those for whom we pave the way.

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

I hope I'll die on stage at the age at 105, playing Peter Pan.

I had planned to spend my 40s continuing my public service and starting a family. I thought that by fighting for the people I cared about and loving those close to me, I could leave the world a better place.

National service is America at its best.

Wherever I go, I get a sense of longing for community and the desire on the part of grassroots citizens to be part of something bigger and far nobler than themselves. This attitude is particularly evident among the young, many of whom feel deprived of a great cause in which to enlist. .

I believe very, very strongly that when you serve, you serve the entire state.

For me, any chance to serve Singapore even in its limited capacity... I would be glad to take it up and use it to serve Singaporeans.

Nobody wants to get old, but nobody wants to die young either.

A life not lived for others is not a life, a game not played for others is not a game.

When I was very young, I started to make friends with much, much older people. So when I was twenty, my friends were fifty, and I never really went through forty because I would watch them die and I would feel younger. So you make friends with older people and you will always feel young no matter what.

Nature in denying us perennial youth has at least invited us to become unselfish and noble.

If you devote yourself to more than yourself ... you will have more than yourself to show for yourself.

Someone said to me the other day: "Well, you're eventually going to live until 110." And I said: "Well, who's going to keep me? What age do I retire? 100?" How are you going to live all those years and who is going to keep you doing it? I have a couple of grandchildren now so I'm banking on them.

Because I believe in my ... proud citizen of this country should be doing. And that is to try and put in as much as he takes out. I guess it's to the hard knocks of life that I attribute this conclusion.

Someone criticized an elderly man for wooing young women. He replied that that was the only way to rejuvenation, which was, afterall, everybody's wish.

While we can't turn off the aging gene, we do go to a lot of extremes to stay young, I've noticed.

Learn how to grow out of yourself and into the world of others: Plant a shade tree under which you know you will never sit. Set some goals that may benefit your children or an orphanage or the employees of your company or future generations or your own city, fifty years from now.

Naturally, there's got to be a limit for I don't expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

More young people are volunteering than ever before. More people are including service to others on their busy lives' to do list. The promise of America is embedded deep in our DNA, calling us to a much less shallow search for happiness and meaning.

What is death to me? I have sown the seeds others will reap.

We want to live forever, and we're getting there.

We live not to ourselves, our work is life.