Any U.S. attorney's office would fall over itself to investigate, for example, a state governor who, while running for reelection against a former mayor, so much as hinted to the mayor's successor that, say, highway funds would be restricted unless the current mayor were to announce an inquiry into her predecessor's alleged corruption.

George T. Conway III

To a generation beaten down by skyrocketing unemployment, plunging retirement savings, and mounting home foreclosures, 'Mad Men' offers the schadenfreude-filled message that their predecessors were equally unhappy - and that the bleakness meter in American life has always been set on high.

Adam Cohen

Vampirism is like celebrity now. Vampires are these eternally young, thin, sexy apparitions of perpetual nightlife and absolutely nothing like their folkloric European boogeyman predecessors. We don't even make our vampires sleep in coffins anymore, or the ground.

Adam Rex

Hip-hop has had this history where the predecessor just is so harsh and not nice to the next coming generation that it creates this separation and this gap.

Ali Shaheed Muhammad

In a system of precedent, the new majority bears the weight of explaining why the constitutional vision of their predecessors was flawed and of making the case as to why theirs better captures the meaning of our fundamental law.

Amy Coney Barrett

I know my predecessors have written a Green Arrow who has a lot of thoughts about social justice, but that was a more evolved, older, wiser Green Arrow.

Ann Nocenti

You always stand on the shoulders of your predecessor.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer

Obama's openness is a welcome change from his predecessor, who went all the way to the Supreme Court to hide the RSVP list for a single policy meeting. And transparency is intrinsically good, since in a democracy, very little government activity is legitimately secret.

Ari Melber

As long as you're in an environment where the worth of the project isn't based on the project but what its predecessors did, it's not truly inclusive.

Ava DuVernay

To equal a predecessor, one must have twice they worth.

Baltasar Gracian

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.

Bill Kristol

To the best of my knowledge, when I became national secretary and, indeed, Victorian secretary, the - my predecessors in the union had detected wrong activities, activities which aren't in the best traditions of the AWU or, indeed, trade unionism.

Bill Shorten

I used to say I never talk about my successor, neither about my predecessor.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

With super PACs, we've seen voter turnout go up; interest in elections rise; and the number of competitive races increase. The campaigns of 2010 and 2012 have been more issue-oriented than their predecessors, not less.

Bradley A. Smith

Going back to the moon is not visionary in restoring space leadership for America. Like its Apollo predecessor, it will prove to be a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies.

Buzz Aldrin

My family immigrated when I was 3, and our predecessors inhabited the Korean Peninsula for as long as can be recalled.

Chang-Rae Lee

My first attempts to transmit typhus to laboratory animals, including the smaller species of monkeys, had failed, as had those of my predecessors, for reasons which I can easily supply today.

Charles Jules Henry Nicole

Across Massachusetts, there are many talented and inspiring educators doing for their students what their predecessors did for me.

Charlie Baker

We vetoed five income tax increases during my time as governor. We cut business taxes $2.3 billion, and we cut regulation by one-third of what my predecessor put in place.

Chris Christie

You can't grow if you're going to say: 'The contributions of my predecessors are greater than anything I can ever achieve.' Each generation has to have a chance to find itself.

Christian Scott

The unknown has undone many a president, and no matter the popularity of an Oval Office occupant, any and all presidents are vulnerable. Of course, one thing that seems to set Obama part from his recent predecessors is his ability to keep an inner calm about tough issues.

Chuck Todd