Harold Kushner Quotes

Be ambitious about things that last.

You are where you are today because you stand on somebody's shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself. If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It's the quid pro quo of life. We exist temporarily through what we take, but we live forever through what we give

I know that there are obstacles; I know that there are hills to climb, I know there were people before me that made my journey easier and there are people behind me that I have made the journey easier for.

A measure of victory has been won, and honors have been bestowed in token thereof. But honours fade or are forgotten, and monuments crumble into dust. It is the battle itself that matters - and the battle must go on.

Rome was not built in one day.

We, of our time, have played our part in the perseverance, and we have pledged ourselves to the dead generations who have preserved intact for us this glorious heritage, that we, too, will strive to be faithful to the end, and pass on this tradition unblemished.

The accolades, just like the scrapes and bruises, fade in the end, and all you're left with is your ambition.

There are people who will appreciate what I've done, and there will be people who will criticize me. Ultimately history will have the final say.

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.

When you have children, you realize that at the end, it's all about passing on, about handing down.

I'm attending to my legacy, making sure that it travels the universe in the best shape I can get it into. For as long as I'm alive, I'll still be its interpreter.

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.

I want to be around for a long time. I don't want to be a one-hit wonder.

One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.

Events are as much the parents of the future as they were the children of the past.

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;

I'm trying to get to a deep future, but in order to get to a deep future, I had to think about the deep past.

I think there really are a lot of people in the world who probably feel like they've done so much in life, made so much of their talents and ambitions that they feel the need to bequeath it to someone.

We're standing on the shoulders of so many people who have already broken down so many barriers.

There's been a lot of champions before me, and I'm sure there will be ahead of me.

You can build your legacy and your legacy can be big, but even after you slip or fall, you learn, and your legacy is getting even bigger.

Don't be so shortsighted that if it doesn't happen right now, you're not going to be happy. You are sowing seeds that will reap a great harvest for generations to come.

I have never had illusions about the value of my individual contribution! I realized early that what a man or a woman does is built on what those who have gone before have done, that its real value depends on making the matter in hand a little clearer, a little sounder for those who come after. Nobody begins or ends anything. Each person is a link, weak or strong, in an endless chain. One of our gravest mistakes is persuading ourselves that nobody has passed this way before.

It is wise to seek immortality for time defeats all other ambitions.

Not everything was lost in the flow of time