Ancestor Quotes - Page 19

• It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?

  Damon Knight

  Past, Silence, Atrocities

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• To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations, as well as the security and wellbeing of our subjects, is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart.

  Hirohito

  Lying, Heart, Common

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• Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

  Maya Angelou

  Dream, Pain, Ocean

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Dec 04, 2012

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• English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Blue, Gnarly, Enemy

  Roy Blount, Jr. (2009). “Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory”, p.125, Macmillan

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• A fossil is so powerful. It's moving. This is my ancestor. The naturalist is moved by the fossil... not the cross.

  Greg Graffin

  Powerful, Moving, Fossils

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• It's very clear from Biblical history and Jewish history that Jewish monotheism wasn't developed in an instant, that it became gradually the accepted norm. But undoubtedly, Jewish ancestors were polytheists.

  Robert Winston

  Biblical, Accepted, Jewish History

  "Epiphanies: Lord Robert Winston". "The Spirit of Things" with Rachael Kohn, www.abc.net.au. June 4, 2006.

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• A damnably readable, streamlined, yet deeply researched work. Skipping the ancestors and aftermath of conventional biography, Max gives us the man, his work, and his times-the niceties of which (so complicated, so exquisitely intertwined) Max articulates with, well, Wallace-like lucidity and wit. Above all this is the story of a touching young man who insisted on being something better than simply the smartest person in the room.

  Blake Bailey

  Men, Giving, Touching

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• What I would like to do is to leave behind a sustainable entity of a set of companies that operate in an exemplary manner in terms of ethics, values and continue what our ancestors left behind.

  Ratan Tata

  Ethics, Entity, Left Behind

  "Talk Asia" with Sara Sidner, transcripts.cnn.com. April 13, 2011.

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• To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.

  Chief Seattle

  Ashes, Sacred, Native American Indian

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• There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.'

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Ocean, Book, Swear To God

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• There's a theory that snoring at night in sleep is a subconscious defence reflex-a warning sound that frightened potential predators away from the mouth of the cave when our lower-paleolithic ancestors huddled in vulnerable sleep. That group of nomads, cameleers, sheep and goat herders, farmers, and guerilla fighters lent credibility to the idea, for they snored so thunderously and with such persistent ferocity through the long, cold night that they would've frightened a pride of ravenous lions into scattering like startled mice.

  Gregory David Roberts

  Sleep, Pride, Night

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• You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.

  Henry Louis Gates

  White, Upset, Black

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• Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors, but like them resolve never to part with your birthright; be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberties. Fllow not the dictates of passion, but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights.

  Joseph Warren

  Wise, Passion, Patriotic

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• From the point where our ancestors started making tools, people have been unable to survive without the things they make; in this sense, it is making things that makes us human.

  Neil MacGregor

  People, Tools, Humans

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• The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine’s Day on February’s shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.

  Tom Robbins

  Valentine, Lucky, Causes

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• Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.

  John B. Watson

  Artist, Years, Doctors

  "Behaviorism". Book by John B. Watson (p.82), 1930.

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• A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric.

  Thomas Huxley

  Real, Science, Men

  Quoted in Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1900)

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• I am proud to call myself a Hindu, I am proud that I am one of your unworthy servants. I am proud that I am a countryman of yours, you the descendants of the sages, you the descendants of the most glorious Rishis the world ever saw. Therefore have faith in yourselves, be proud of your ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Faith, Proud, Saws

  Swami Vivekananda (1932). “The Complete Works of the Swami Vivekananda, Comprising All His Lectures, Addresses and Discourses Delivered in Europe, America and India: All His Writings in Prose and Poetry, Together with Translations of Those Written in Bengali and Sanskrit; Reports of His Interviews and His Replies to the Various Addresses of Welcome; His Sayings and Epistles,--private and Public--original and Translated; with an Index; Carefully Revised & Edited”

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• Have faith in yourselves, be proud of your ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Faith, Proud, Ashamed

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Swami Vivekananda on Himself”, p.266, Advaita Ashrama

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• Children of those ancient Aryans, through the grace of the Lord may you have the same pride, may that faith in your ancestors come into your blood, may it become a part and parcel of your lives, may it work towards the salvation of the world!

  Swami Vivekananda

  Motivational, Faith, Children

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1271, Manonmani Publishers

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• Memories are their own descendents masquerading as the ancestors of the present.

  David Mitchell

  Memories

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• We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose in this battle.

  Benjamin E. Mays

  Battle, Liberty, Today

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• Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Home, Men, Land

  W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.1429, eBookIt.com

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• When we illuminate the road back to our ancestors, they have a way of reaching out, of manifesting themselves...sometimes even physically.

  Raquel Cepeda

  Way, Sometimes, Reaching

  Raquel Cepeda (2014). “Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Over the course of the millennia, all these ancestors in your tree, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time-to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind?

  Laurence Overmire

  Dream, Responsibility, Giving

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