Ancestor Quotes - Page 18

• It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.

  William James

  Religious, Reality, Destiny

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.394, Harvard University Press

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• We have either to progress or to degenerate. Our ancestors did great things in the past, but we have to grow into a fuller life and march beyond even their great achievements.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Past, Achievement, Progress

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1118, Manonmani Publishers

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• You are not barred from attaining greatness by heredity. No matter who or what your ancestors may have been or how unlearned or lowly their station, the upward way is open for you. There is no such thing as inheriting a fixed mental position; no matter how small the mental capital we receive from our parents, it may be increased; no man is incapable of growth.

  Wallace D. Wattles

  Men, Greatness, Parent

  Wallace D. Wattles (2015). “The Science of Being Great: Personal Self-Help Book of Wallace D. Wattles (Unabridged): From one of The New Thought pioneers, author of The Science of Getting Rich, The Science of Being Well, How to Get What You Want, Hellfire Harrison, How to Promote Yourself and A New Christ”, p.8, e-artnow

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• Moreover, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house.

  Carl Jung

  Life, Wall, House

  Carl Gustav Jung, Meredith Sabini (2002). “The Earth Has a Soul: The Nature Writings of C.G. Jung”, p.36, North Atlantic Books

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• My ancestors were Brahmins. They spent their lives in search of god. I am spending my life in search of man.

  Muhammad Iqbal

  Men, Brahmins, Spending

  "Educational Thinkers". Book by V. R. Taneja and S. Taneja, 2006.

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• A man who thinks too much about his ancestors is like a potato-the best part of him is underground.

  Henry S. F. Cooper

  Men, Thinking, Tree

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• My father chose my name , and my last name was chosen by my ancestors . That’s enough, I myself choose my way

  Ali Shariati

  Family, Father, Responsibility

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• Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers glory - to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.

  Walter Lippmann

  Average, Genius, Machines

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• Nature is flexible and resilient. Nature likes redundancy and dispersion. It is approximate and deals in gradients. All boundaries are permeable. Nature nests small systems like molecules within larger systems like cells, which in turn are nested in systems called organs, organisms, ecosystems. We grew from ancient one-celled ancestors. Nature likes mergers: we contain multitudes of other life forms within us. We stand at the crest of four billion years, bacteria molded into wondrous form, burning with a slow fire and about to take the next step.

  Robert Frenay

  Nature, Ecosystems, Fire

  Robert Frenay (2006). “Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things”, p.32, Macmillan

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• Black History is enjoying the life of our ancestors who paved the way for every African-American. No matter what color you are, the history of Blacks affected everyone; that's why we should cherish and respect Black history. Black history changed America and is continuing to change and shape our country. Black history is about everyone coming together to better themselves and America. Black history is being comfortable in your own skin no matter what color you are. Black history makes me proud of where I came from and where I am going in life.

  Bernice Mosby

  Country, America, Color

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• You do not need to belong to the cat for a long time to realize the main thing that cats like to do is to wrap theirselves up in mystery, perhaps only except for a hobby of jumbling up everything that is in order. And if the cat can, and usually so, make a great mystery of where it was when you were searching for it even if a moment ago it was sitting by your side, do not have any doubts: its ancestors had a great pleasure to surround its origin by mystery.

  Cleveland Amory

  Cat, Order, Your Side

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• Darwin speculated that “music tones and rhythms were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph” and that speech arose, secondarily, from this primal music.

  Oliver Sacks

  Strong, Passion, Animal

  "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain". Book by Oliver Sacks, October 16, 2007.

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• I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky.

  Shannon Hale

  Sweet, Morning, Pain

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• Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

  Charles Dickens

  Country, Mean, Hands

  Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.1

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• Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components.

  Carl Jung

  Artist, Soul, Age

  "Memories, Dreams, Reflections". Book by Carl Jung, www.avclub.com. 1962.

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• Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.

  Alexander Pope

  Thanksgiving, Littles, Patient

  Alexander Pope, “Imitations Of Horace: The First Epistle Of The Second Book”

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• I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.

  Kage Baker

  Writing, Technology, Thinking

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• Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.

  Richard Dawkins

  Years, Long, Generations

  Richard Dawkins (2004). “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The modern technological world appears overwhelming to many people. It drives some to pessimism and despair. It makes others doubt the future of mankind unless we retreat to simpler lives and even to the ways of our ancestors. What these people fail to realize is that we cannot go back to those ways and those days. Furthermore, for all our difficulties, life today is far better for more people and the possibilities for the future can be brighter than ever if we develop not only new knowledge, but a greater faith and confidence in the human mind and spirit.

  Glenn T. Seaborg

  People, Mind, Doubt

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• At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different--in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Running, Should Have, People

  "The Number of the Beast". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, p. 134, 1980.

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• Several Southeastern tribes have long said that their ancestors received immigrants from Mesoamerica and that these immigrants introduced many cultural changes. Far too few anthropologists were listening.

  Richard Thornton

  Long, Listening, Tribes

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• I'm free... to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't. I can. And my children will.

  Jefferson Smith

  Children, Thinking, Speak

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• I don't rock chains our ancestors did it for us

  Phonte

  Rocks, Chains

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• My ancestors are all crazy. My great-great-granddad, he was the last man to live in a cave in Nottingham.

  Neon Hitch

  Crazy, Men, Caves

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• We still like to make up stories, just as our ancestors did, which use personification to explain the great forces of our existence. Such stories, which explain how the world began or where the sun goes when it sets, we call myths. Mythology is a natural product of the symbolizing mind; poets, when not making up myths of their own, are still commanding ancient ones.

  John Frederick Nims

  Mind, Sun, Stories

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