Ancestor Quotes - Page 12

• It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood.

  Bernard DeVoto

  Nature, Fall, Swans

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• A testimony is a most precious possession because it is not acquired by logic or reason alone, it cannot be purchased with earthly possessions, and it cannot be given as a present or inherited from our ancestors. We cannot depend on the testimonies of other people. We need to know for ourselves. President Gordon B. Hinckley said, ‘Every Latter-day Saint has the responsibility to know for himself or herself with a certainty beyond doubt that Jesus is the resurrected, living Son of the living God.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Jesus, Responsibility, Son

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• Do not throw away your heart. Keep your heart. Your heart is all that matters ... Throw away your ancestors! ... Throw away your shyness and the anger that lies just a few inches beneath ... Accept the truth! And if there is more than one truth, then learn to do the difficult work -- learn to choose. You are good enough, you are HUMAN ENOUGH, to choose!

  Gary Shteyngart

  Lying, Heart, Difficult Work

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• One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.

  Winona LaDuke

  Teaching, White, Differences

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• My chastity's the jewel of our house, bequeathed down from many ancestors.

  William Shakespeare

  Jewels, House, Chastity

  1604-5 Diana. All'sWellThat EndsWell, act 4, sc.2, l.47-50.

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• It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you're a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn't hurt a fly. It's enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Hurt, Children, Giving Up

  P. G. Wodehouse (1994). “The Theatre Omnibus”, Hutchinson Radius

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• We are bound to our ancestors and to those who made us, whether we want to be or not. What matters is what we make of what we are.

  Kate Elliott

  What Matters, Want, Made

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• Archaeological materials are not mute. They speak their own language. And they need to be used for the great source they are to help unravel the spirituality of those of our ancestors who predate the Indo-Europeans by many thousands of years.

  Marija Gimbutas

  Years, Needs, Helping

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• The Ojibways have great respect for the Bear. According to their legends, in the distant past the Bear had a human form and was in fact an ancestor of the Ojibways. Therefore he understands the Indian language and will never attack or fight any Indian if he is addressed properly.

  Norval Morrisseau

  Fighting, Past, Legends

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• For the white man to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped, or the wolf asking the sheep, 'Do you hate me?' The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate! Why, when all of my ancestors are snake-bitten, and I'm snake-bitten, and I warn my children to avoid snakes, what does that snake sound like accusing me of hate-teaching?

  Malcolm X

  Children, Hate, Teaching

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.248, Ballantine Books

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• Everything has a spirit and it's all connected. If you think about that, if you live your life by it, then you're less likely to cause any hurt. It's like how our bodies go back into the ground when we die, so that connects us to the earth. If you dump trash, you're dumping it on your and my ancestors. Or to bring it down to its simplest level: treat everything and everybody the way you want to be treated, because when you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself.

  Charles de Lint

  Hurt, Thinking, Live Your Life

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• That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle-behold, the Running Man.

  Christopher McDougall

  Running, Art, Real

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• The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry, which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long processes of argument by immediate intuition.

  Samuel Johnson

  Cutting, Years, Long

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.237

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• It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors.

  David Hume

  Strong, People, Ignorant

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.130

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• Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. . . . We might as well require a man to wear the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Boys, Men, Hands

  Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1816

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• Do what he will, he [the profane man] is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present in him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being.

  Mircea Eliade

  Past, Reality, Men

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• It is how it has always been. We will accept the legacy of our ancestors,' Asha says, smiling, and in her smile I do not see warmth or wisdom; I see fear. You're afraid of losing your hold on them,' I say coolly. I? I have no power.' Don't you? If you keep them from the magic, they will never know what their lives could be.' They will remain protected,' Asha insists. No,' I say. 'Only untested' -page 569

  Libba Bray

  Magic, Pages, Legacy

  Libba Bray (2009). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.364, Simon and Schuster

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• What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go somewhere else to make it. That's all. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. Those who were making it in England, for example, did not get on the Mayflower. That's how the country was settled.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Believe, Hero

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• My son, be worthy of your noble name, worthily borne by your ancestors for over five hundred years. Remember it’s by courage, and courage alone, that a nobleman makes his way nowadays. Don’t be afraid of opportunities, and seek out adventures. My son, all I have to give you is fifteen ecus, my horse, and the advice you’ve just heard. Make the most of these gifts, and have a long, happy life.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Horse, Adventure, Son

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• If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion, but it means that you share DNA. I think it's fascinating.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Mean, Thinking, Dna

  "After the Beer Summit". Interview with Deborah Solomon, www.nytimes.com. February 11, 2010.

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• I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit.

  Herbert Hoover

  Religious, Blood, Presidential

  Herbert Hoover (1929). “The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover, 1928”, p.36, Stanford University Press

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• Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.

  Lynne Tillman

  Pepsi

  Lynne Tillman (2014). “Motion Sickness”, p.113, Red Lemonade

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• We are the ancestors of our grandchildren's children. We look after them, just as our ancestors look after us. We aren't here for ourselves. We are here for each other and for the children of our grandchildren.

  Roy Sesana

  Children, Grandchildren, Looks

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• And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors.

  Plato

  Plato, Men, Self

  Plato (2015). “The Complete Plato”, p.310, Lulu.com

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• Artificial selection turned the wolf into the shepherd, and the wild grasses into wheat and corn. In fact, almost every plant and animal that we eat today was bred from a wild, less edible ancestor. If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only ten or fifteen thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of life.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Animal, Years, Profound

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