John of Salisbury Quotes

I think there's true drama in the formation of everything that we know and are standing on the shoulders of.

I do believe the most important thing I can do now is to help young people understand the past and prepare for the future.

If you break an individual record, it's because of the greatness that comes before you.

History belongs above all to the man...who needs models, teachers, comforters and cannot find them among his contemporaries.

If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them -- structures which neither Plato nor Archimedes had dreamed possible.

There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.

The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up.

So, if I had a mentor, it was Johnny Moss.

Great men exist that there might be greater men.

All those things that are now field to be of the greatest antiquity were at one time new; what we to-day hold up by example will rank hereafter as precedent.

I take my role as an ambassador for the sport, and as a role model for boys, girls, mommies, daddies - whoever it is - very, very seriously. I know the impact my role models have had in my life, and I'm in a really beautiful position to be able to be that for others.

I am a part of history whether people want to take it seriously or not.

The guide, the guru, the leader, the teacher, has passed away; the boy, the student, the servant, is left behind.

At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m “passing the torch.” I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much-and I’m using it to light the torches of others.

That Logic has advanced in this sure course, even from the earliest times, is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it has been unable to advance a step, and thus to all appearance has reached its completion.

I do talk and think a lot about the legacy before me. I feel like if I didn't know that people had been in Montgomery sixty years ago trying to do similar things that I'm trying to do, with a lot less, with fewer resources, with less security, with less encouragement, with less opportunity - if I didn't know that, then I think doing what I do would be much, much harder.

What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It's the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician: 'He passed it on.'

Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.

Jane Jacobs work wouldnt have been complete if it hadn't inspired others to carry it on, and evolve Jane's groundbreaking accomplishments so that the essential kernel of thought remains relevant for future generations. The essayists in What We See have built on those essential footholds that people who have never heard of Jane Jacobs will benefit from for decades.

If we talk about changes of power in Russia, that has occurred several times in the past century. After Stalin came Khrushchev, who implemented his legacy quite radically, one could say. But there was no blood, nonetheless. After Brezhnev came Gorbachev. I'm not talking about the ones who were in power for only a short period of time. Gorbachev, too, left a very radical legacy.

A true leader is not the one with the most followers, but one who creates the most leaders.

... we are the products of our past. ... a web of complexities.

It is very difficult now in South Africa to find anyone who ever supported apartheid.

That was exciting to be able to comment on civil rights. I mean, the civil rights movement that young people don't know about today, but Martin Luther King was considered by the establishment press in the early years of the sit-in movement as a dangerous man, and he was the equivalent at that time as Malcolm X. And he was told to stop his demonstrations; they were against the law and all of that. Now that he's sainted and sanctified we've forgotten.

I love teaching. It's a job that lasts forever. Whatever you teach children today travels with them far into the future.