The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten. Carl Sagan
Plato and his objectivistic successors ... preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny-the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course. Max Horkheimer
[About Algol 60] Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors. C. A. R. Hoare
Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets. Abraham Lincoln
I would say that we are the only defenders left of liberty in a world of Fascists. ... these fascists and communists are the successors today of the wars of the sects. Stanley Baldwin
I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Thomas Edison