Quotes & Sayings About Family Ancestry

This reference to the Scots side of her ancestry is the first of two visual explorations into Tori Amos's diverse cultural past. As is the case for many of us, Tori's ancestry is a mix of races and religions, philosophies and professions, fortunes and foibles. What to some may seem like a family tree grown wild and untamed is actually a mighty oak that has weathered life's many storms and can still put out a rare and beautiful blossom like Tori. — Kevyn Aucoin

I discovered that there is Indian blood in my ancestry on my father's side - a fact that had not been talked about in my family. No wonder I've often been cast in exotic roles - Indian princesses, Russian revolutionaries, Algerians, Gypsies and Greeks. — Diana Quick

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

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. — Shirley Abbott

All modern humans are related to what scientists call "Mitochondrial Eve." This refers to our common matrilineal ancestor. She lived approximately 200,000 years ago and depending on how you estimate the length of a generation, we are only 5,000 to 10,000 generations from one another. To put it another way, each of us is a cousin of one another at most 10,000 times removed. And yes, Mitochondrial Eve lived in Africa, so, in a very real way, we are all Africans. — Desmond Tutu

Much the same may be said of his ancestry and family connections. — Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood

The family trees of all of us, of whatever origin or trait, must meet and merge into one genetic tree of all humanity by the time they have spread into our ancestries for about 50 generations. — Guy Murchie

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

The MSS uses two main themes in recruiting foreign nationals of Chinese ancestry. First, it appeals to their perceived obligation to help the land of their heritage, thereby exploiting sentimental feelings of ethnic pride. Second, it implies that family members still in the PRC will receive unfavorable treatment unless the subjects cooperate. The latter approach is quite stressful for the subjects and a strong motivational factor in favor of compliance. — Nicholas Eftimiades

You see de white gown she wears, richly embroidered, showing de family's wealth and influence," said Daphne authoritatively. "De red rose in her hair symbolizes her Spanish ancestry. De prayer book in her left hand to display de Catholic allegiance."
"What does the dog symbolize?" Sarah asked. Daphne blinked at her for a moment.
"De dog is just a dog," she said, finally. — Magnus Flyte

When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth. — Alex Haley

There are many kinds of conceit, but the chief one is to let people know what a very ancient and gifted family one descends from. — Benvenuto Cellini

Wealth is also defined by family, connection to our ancestry, and our best vision of the future. All of these find their inner spirit, their constancy, and their strength in the values that shape our thinking and our actions. — Nainoa Thompson

My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry. — Joseph Bruchac

In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone.

"But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen. — Nayomi Munaweera

Blood can help make family, but family often transcends blood. — DaShanne Stokes

We really invented the genre of tracing family trees and going back as far as we could on the paper trail. When the paper trail disappeared, we used DNA analysis. The technology was just being invented that allowed you to trace ancestry through DNA. — Henry Louis Gates

Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy culling.
It was life, and death, and all that spanned between.
It was his birthright. — Nenia Campbell

I come from a long line of miserable people. — Arlene Schindler

I've always been fascinated by family ancestry. — Molly Antopol

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States entered into World War II to protect our way of life and to help liberate those who had fallen under the Axis occupation. The country rallied to produce one of the largest war efforts in history. Young men volunteered to join the Armed Forces, while others were drafted. Women went to work in factories and took military jobs. Everyone collected their used cooking grease and metals to be used for munitions. They rationed gas and groceries. Factories now were producing airplanes, weapons, and military vehicles. They all wanted to do their part. And they did, turning America into a war machine. The nation was in full support to help our boys win the war and come home quickly.
Grandpa wanted to do his part too. — Kara Martinelli

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your ancestors are rooting for you. — Eleanor Brownn

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