Quotes & Sayings About Ancestry

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people. — Octavia E. Butler

I received a most amusing postcard the other morning. Unfortunately, it was not signed in a readable manner so I cannot answer it privately. But it comes from Moblie, Ala., and says: 'Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: You have not answered my question, the amount of Negro blood you have in your veins, if any.' I am afraid none of us know how much nor what kind of blood we have in our veins, since chemically it is all the same. And most of us cannot trace our ancestry more than a few generations. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Men who pride themselves on their ancestry are like the potato plant, the most part of which is under ground. — William Tyler

For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans. — Jeremy Hardy

There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless. — John Barrymore

You, the sons of the pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry, must make your lives as worthy as they made theirs. They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor — Theodore Roosevelt

Sire, I am my own Rudolph of Hapsburg. — Napoleon Bonaparte

For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans. — John F. Kerry

Family is not just about who you appear to belong to, or what it says on your birth certificate, or who you look like, or even what they'd find if they studied your DNA. Family is found anywhere you are loved and cared for. That might mean friends or foster parents, a group or even a charity. What matters far more - so much more than chemistry or ancestry - is that precious bond, that reassurance that they won't let you down. — Marina Chapman

I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect. — Pierre Trudeau

I've got German, Cornish and Scottish ancestry. It might help explain my affinity for forests, the sea, and fatty foods. — Kyle MacLachlan

The secret to a long-lasting relationship is perpetually imagining the worst. It's a world view tracing back to my Eastern European ancestry and one I draw upon regularly. — Zoe Lister-Jones

No one is innocent in the tide of history. Everyone has kings and slaves in his past. Everyone has saints and sinners. We are not to blame for the actions of our ancestors. We can only try to be the best we can, no matter what our heritage, to strive for a better future for all. — Diana Peterfreund

'Cullum' is Scottish, but I'm nowhere near Scottish. My mother is Burmese, and my father is of German, Jewish, English ancestry. — Jamie Cullum

It should be remembered that hundreds of people of African ancestry also walked the Trail of Tears with the Cherokee during the forced removal of 1838-1839. Although we know about the terrible human suffering of our native people and the members of other tribes during the removal, we rarely hear of those black people who also suffered. — Wilma Mankiller

Quite recently the human descent theory has been stigmatized as the 'gorilla theory of human ancestry.' All this despite the fact that Darwin himself, in the days when not a single bit of evidence regarding the fossil ancestors of man was recognized, distinctly stated that none of the known anthropoid apes, much less any of the known monkeys, should be considered in any way as ancestral to the human stock. — Henry Fairfield Osborn

I was on the wrong side of colonization. My ancestry is mostly mired in having the colonial experience as colonized subjects, first as slaves and then as independent subjects with a post-colonial experience. — Fred D'Aguiar

We are all creatures of our ancestry! There is no right and wrong, objectively. — Piers Anthony

Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage. — Saadi

Every time a crime was committed by a Muslim, that person's faith was mentioned, regardless of its relevance. When a crime is committed by a Christian, do they mention his religion? ... When a crime is committed by a black man, it's mentioned in the first breath: 'An African American man was arrested today ... ' But what about German Americans? Anglo Americans? A white man robs a convenience store and do we hear he's of Scottish descent? In no other instance is the ancestry mentioned. — Dave Eggers

In a day of footloose movements of people and of mixed marriages in the ancestry of the most desirable elements of the community we preach unabashed the gospel of the pure race. — Ruth Benedict

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us. — Van Wyck Brooks

A certain bygone philosophy-which certainly must have quite forgotten all about the real child-used to speak of the child's nature as a tabula rasa, or 'blank page,' upon which experience and training might write what they pleased. As a matter of fact, the child's nature at birth, like that of a calf or a chick, is pretty well scribbled over by the experience of its ancestors. It is far from being blank, for as soon as the little organism comes into the world, it begins to do certain things and do them with much zeal and determination, as every one knows who knows real children. — Edward O. Sisson

... I fell in love with him even more, because I realized I was not just falling in love with Taymour but also with generations of him that connect through history, traits that had been passed down from one generation to the next. I was in love with his ancestry that stretched out for centuries. — Saleem Haddad

Jethro was the "priest of Midian" and the father-in-law of Moses (Exodus 3:1; 4:18). He was also called "Reuel" (Exodus 2:18) and is described as a Midianite in Numbers 10:29.
The original Midianites were probably descendants of Midian, one of Abraham's sons by Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4). The land where they lived then became known as "Midian" (Exodus 2:15). It is likely that the people who lived in the land of Midian were then all called Midianites, even if they were not descendants of Midian. For example, some descendants of Ishmael appear to be called Midianites (Genesis 37:25,28; Judges 8:24).
We don't know whether Jethro was a descendant of Midian, or whether he had some other ancestry but lived in the land of Midian.
In Judges 1:16, Jethro is described as a "Kenite" but that may not relate directly to his ancestry. The word keni in Aramaic means "smith" and it is thought that the Kenites may have been metal workers. — Rob J. Hyndman

A person in search of his ancestors naturally likes to believe the best of them, and the best in terms of contemporary standards. Where genealogical facts are few, and these located in the remote past, reconstruction of family history is often more imaginative than correct. — James G. Leyburn

Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done. — John Caudwell

A man's ancestry is a positive property to him. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Every sentence has its drumbeat. rhythm is one of the most powerful dimensions of language: it separates tribes, united families, soothes children, and shocks us into new awarenesses. Every good writer, marching to his or her own drumbeat, marks out a vibrational field as home territory. The cadences of our sentences carry echos of ancestry and influence as surely as the double helix that orchstrates the life of the body. — Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. — Seneca The Elder

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common hatred of its neighbors. — William Ralph Inge

High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of. — William Warburton

It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry down too close to your own time - it is safest to speak only vaguely of your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I now do. I was born without teeth - and there Richard III had the advantage of me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest. But — Mark Twain

It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. — John Steinbeck

Humanity shares a common ancestry with all living things on Earth. We often share especially close intimacies with the microbial world. In fact, only a small percentage of the cells in the human body are human at all. Yet, the common biology and biochemistry that unites us also makes us susceptible to contracting and transmitting infectious disease. — Brenda Wilmoth Lerner

I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties. — Gary Locke

It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live. — Spencer Wells

My accent is of African ancestry and so is my origin and I have no intention to change any of it. Therefore nobody should expect me to fraudulently behave as if I was anything else. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

Today, there are more people of Irish ancestry in the United States than in Ireland, more Jews than in Israel, more blacks than in most African countries. There are more people of Polish ancestry in Detroit than in most of the leading cities in Poland, and more than twice as many people of Italian ancestry in New York as in Venice. — Thomas Sowell

Don't you dare take the lazy way. It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don't let me catch you doing it! Now
look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do. — John Steinbeck

My guess is that the Jonathan would be as out of place in England or Kazakhstan, the native ground of its ancestors, as I would be in Russia, the native ground of my own. The arrow of natural history won't be reversed: by now the Jonathan's as much an American as I am. — Michael Pollan

Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent. — Josh Billings

People like to trace their ancestry. — Richard Dawkins

Liberalism, contrary to popular belief, is facing backward in considering the injustice of its ancestors. Conservatism, contrary to popular belief, is facing forward in considering the psychology of its descendants. Definitively, it seems in the modern world that neither side really knows which direction it's facing, and men of the sharpest judgment are simply turned off from picking either of the poisons. — Criss Jami

The egg it is the source of all To everyone's ancestral hall. — Clarence Day

I knew my mother was - well, her ancestry dated back to John Quincy Adams, so she was totally not Latina. She was definitely whatever you call it - white bread, shall we say? — Raquel Welch

We shall see that the problems we have to face concern the possible influence of Babylon, rather than of Egypt, upon Hebrew tradition. And one last example, drawn from the later period, will serve to demonstrate how Babylonian influence penetrated the ancient world and has even left some trace upon modern civilization. It is a fact, though one perhaps not generally realized, that the twelve divisions on the dials of our clocks and watches have a Babylonian, and ultimately a Sumerian, ancestry. For why is it we divide the day into twenty-four hours? We have a decimal system of reckoning, we count by tens; why then should we divide the day and night into twelve hours each, instead of into ten or some multiple of ten? The reason is that the Babylonians divided the day into twelve double-hours; and the Greeks took over their ancient system of time-division along with their knowledge of astronomy and passed it on to us. — Leonard W. King

Women are outperforming men in almost every sphere of life in our society and the women of East Indian ancestry are no exception to this rule. They have broken the cultural mould. — Kamla Persad-Bissessar

What did it mean, all this personal looking backward? What were people hoping to find? What bearing, really, did their ancestry have on who they were now? — Karen Joy Fowler

The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fish, amphibian, and reptile, warm-blooded bird and mammal-each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water. — Rachel Carson

People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. — Samuel P. Huntington

Oblonsy was fond of a pleasant joke, and sometimes liked to perplex a simple-minded man by observing that if you're going to be proud of your ancestry, why stop short at Prince Rurik and repudiate your oldest ancestor - the ape? — Leo Tolstoy

My life shall be free and broad and great, and I will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancestry. I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwise? — Jack London

It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry. — Huston Smith

Just like our story, the original Christmas tales were stories of searching, not so much for the lost, as for the familiar. Mary and Joseph sought in Bethlehem- the home of their familial ancestry- a place to start their own family; the three kings from the East journeyed beneath the sentinel star to find the King of Kings; and the shepherds sought a child in a place most familiar to them: a manger. — Richard Paul Evans

Every living being is also a fossil. Within it, all the way down to the microscopic structure of its proteins, it bears the traces if not the stigmata of its ancestry. — Jacques Monod

Surely one zoo in the world should have the courage to draw the ultimate conclusion about our ancestry? A cage with Homo Sapiens in all its varying forms, perhaps then we would understand ourselves better. The question of course is whether the other animals would approve of it.
— Cees Nooteboom

Wicked ecclesiastics who show the worst example to the people," and, above all, nobles who empty the purses of the poor by their extravagance, and disdain them for "lowness of blod or foulenesse of body," for deformed shape of body or limb, for dullness of wit and uncunning of craft, and deign not to speak to them, and who are themselves stuffed with pride - of ancestry, fortune, gentility, possessions, power, comeliness, strength, children, treasure - "prowde in lokynge, prowde in spekyng, ... prowde in goinge, standynge and sytting." All would be drawn by fiends to Hell on the Day of Judgment. — Barbara W. Tuchman

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission. — Edmund Burke

Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were collateral cousins, perhaps already living in Europe while we emerged in Africa ... In other words, we are an improbable and fragile entity, fortunately successful after precarious beginnings as a small population in Africa, not the predictable end result of a global tendency. We are a thing, an item of history, not an embodiment of general principles. — Stephen Jay Gould

It will be fine," Christine clapped Griffin encouragingly on the arm. "If it comes to it, you and I are hardly helpless against the otherworldly. Iskander comes from an entire line of monster hunters. And Whyborne is a monster himself."

"Excuse me!" I exclaimed. "I don't appreciate these slurs against my ancestry. — Jordan L. Hawk

When man comes to the realization that he is not the "favorite" of God; that he was not specially created, that the universe was not made for his benefit, and that he is subject to the same laws of nature as all other forms of life, then, and not until then, will he understand that he must rely upon himself, and himself alone, for whatever benefits he is to enjoy; and devote his time and energies to helping himself and his fellow men to meet the exigencies of life and to set about to solve the difficult and intricate problems of living.
The recognition of a problem is the first step to its solution - We are not "fallen" angels, nor were we "created" perfect.
On the contrary, we are the product of millions of years of an unpurposed evolution. We are the descendants and inheritors of all the defects of our primitive ancestry - the evolution of the myriad forms of life from the infinitesimal to the mammoth - from the worm to the dinosaur. — Joseph Lewis

Mongrel A mongrel dog is the result of having beer-goggle eyes on a Friday or Saturday night and then waking up the following morning, still unsure who or what you've slept with. Mongrel dogs are the result of random breeding where the parents are of mixed ancestry too. Each one is unique. — Simon Whaley

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors. — Voltaire

Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot. — Tim Wise

It has taken time and the blundering wisdom and anarchic greed of our ancestry to construct the modern city of consolidated institutions. It is a great historically amassed communal creation. If you fly above it at night, it is a jeweled wonder of the universe, floating like a giant liner on the sea of darkness. It is smart, accomplished, sophisticated, and breathtakingly beautiful. And it glimmers and sparkles as all things breakable glimmer and sparkle. You wonder how much God had to do with this, how much of the splendor and insolence of the modern city creatively built from the disparate intentions of generations of men comes of the inspiration of God. Because it is the city of the unremarked God, the sometime-thing God, the God of history. — E.L. Doctorow

Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves. — Louis L'Amour

I have a musical ancestry as much as I have a family ancestry. Honoring those ancestors gives you access to a greater source of appreciation and information than you would have if you were just going on your own ego system. — Billy Corgan

Back in the eighth century bc two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, occupied roughly the territory of modern Israel. The two kingdoms fought each other, but their inhabitants shared a religion and a common ancestry, because all of them belonged to one of twelve tribes descended from the twelve sons of Jacob. The kingdom of Israel was the older of the two and was originally the location of the religion's holy sites. When that kingdom was invaded by the Assyrians in the eighth century bc, though, tens of thousands of its inhabitants were carried off to northern Iraq. The kingdom of Judah was spared; its inhabitants came to be called Judeans, and then Jews. They, too, were taken into exile in Babylon, and came back with new ideas and changed traditions. As for the exiles from Israel, they were never heard of again, and came to be called the Ten Lost Tribes. But not all the ten tribes were truly lost, say the Samaritans. Some were deported by the Assyrians, yes, but others remained. — Gerard Russell

Through my writing, I learned my Life Lessons from all the experiences in my past, good and bad. Letting go of the drama we create for ourselves is the biggest gift we can ever receive. — KoKo Nervelli

Your ancestors are rooting for you. — Eleanor Brownn

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible. — Joseph Addison

My best friend Zoe has a perfect rear end and stick legs, and long, silky black hair. She is obviously not descended from William Penn. There are no dowdy pilgrims in her ancestry. Whereas I am grounded and mired in this place, she's like milkweed fluff that will take off with the first strong breeze. Stronger than fluff, though. She's like a bullet just waiting for someone to pull the trigger. — Wendy Wunder

The theory of evolution explains to us what our ancestry has been. It does not explain away our worth. Why should we be afraid to learn more about what we are? — Philip Kitcher

Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. — Harlan Stone

Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality. — Eric Hoffer

And, you know, the fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor, and we all have a common ancestry with the plant in the lobby. This is what evolution tells us. And, it's true. It's kind of unbelievable. — Jeff Hawkins

Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo
which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead. — Neal Stephenson

The foolish families worry over blood. I care nothing for purity of family or ancestry. That is a vain thing. I care only for strength. What a man can do to other men, women. — Pierce Brown

The deeply satisfying aspect of the rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston is that black women generated it primarily to establish a maternal literary ancestry. — Zora Neale Hurston

So a dog's value came from the training AND the breeding. And by breeding, Edgar supposed he meant both the bloodlines - the particular dogs in their ancestry - and all the information in the file cabinets. Because the files, with their photographs, measurements, notes, charts, cross-references, and scores, told the STORY of the dog - what a MEANT as his father put it. — David Wroblewski

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. — W.S. Gilbert

We are very fond of some families because they can be traced beyond the Conquest, whereas indeed the farther back, the worse, as being the nearer allied to a race of robbers and thieves. — Daniel Defoe

Ancestry is not destiny, — Eric Weiner

A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity. — Robert Green Ingersoll

A Nation ... is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry, and a common dislike of their neighbors — Karl Deutsch

It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry. — Hosea Ballou

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea. — Mick Taylor

I do feel Scottish in some way. Maybe it's to do with visiting my grandparents here every summer as a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ancestry. It's there all right, but it would be pushing it to label me a Scottish painter. Or, indeed, an anywhere painter. — Peter Doig

By looking at the details of the DNA, it is possible to chart the flow of your ancestry from your ultimate grandmother to more modern times. — Bryan Sykes

Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment , for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions. — Stephen Jay Gould

I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred. — V.S. Naipaul

Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle. — Jared Diamond

I want to be a positive role model, especially for kids and Aboriginal people ... When people see me, often all they see is another Australian athlete having a go. It isn't until they see the full Cathy Freeman picture that they realise how proud I am of my ancestry and heritage. I'd like a little more tolerance and acceptance of my culture and all the differing cultures that make up Australia. — Cathy Freeman

Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace. — Homer

The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity. — Henry Louis Gates

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another. — Seneca The Younger

It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry. — John Phillips Marquand

Our children are an integral component of our stories as we are of theirs and, therefore, each child acts as the knighted messengers to carry their forebears' stories into the future. To deprive our children of the narrative cells regarding the formation of the ozone layer that rims the atmosphere of our ancestors' saga and parental determination of selfhood is to deny them of the sacred right to claim the sanctity of their heritage. Accordingly, all wrinkled brow natives are chargeable with the sacrosanct obligation of telling their kith and kin the memorable story of the scenic days they spent as children of nature splashing about in their naked innocence in the brook of infinite time and space. We must scrupulous document our family's history as well as scrawl out our personal story. — Kilroy J. Oldster