Ancestor Quotes - Page 29

• Blues for me is having things not go your way - life, love, job, money, ... It is not about the oppression of my ancestors, who were trying to get back at the overseers. Blues is different for my generation.

  Robert Cray

  Jobs, Love Life, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors ... This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Memories, Self, Long

  "A Life of Erwin Schrödinger". Book by Walter Moore, 1994.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Entranced by the denotative power of words to define, to order, to represent the things around us, weve overlooked the songful dimension of language so obvious to our oral [storytelling] ancestors. Weve lost our ear for the music of language -- for the rhythmic, melodic layer of speech by which earthly things overhear us.

  David Abram

  Order, Ears, Speech

  12 Copy quote

• In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny.

  Samuel Adams

  Art, War, Luxury

  16 Copy quote

• And let me die suddenly, to be born again in the revelation of beauty....And the revelation of beauty is the wisdom of the ancestors.

  Aime Cesaire

  Beauty, Revelations, Born Again

  33 Copy quote

• You are human, whether your ancestors come from Europe, Asia, Africa, or wherever, shamanism once existed there. We are just attempting to go home to our spiritual roots before the state religions, the agrarian centralized religions rose up with autocratic government and said, 'This is what you're going to believe, these are the official revelations, take it from us, you can trust us, we got it.'

  Michael Harner

  Spiritual, Believe, Home

  37 Copy quote

• That's why we sail. So our children can grow up and be proud of whom they are. We are healing our souls by reconnecting to our ancestors. As we voyage we are creating new stories within the tradition of the old stories, we are literally creating a new culture out of the old.

  Nainoa Thompson

  Travel, Children, Growing Up

  41 Copy quote

• Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

  Clarence Darrow

  Mean, Rebel, Succeed

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.15, Lulu.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as One America.

  William J. Clinton

  Islands, Years, Slave Ships

  Clinton, William J. (2000). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1999”, p.70, Best Books on

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• "We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim..." Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."

  Evelyn Waugh

  Running, Art, Morning

  "Black Mischief". Book by Evelyn Waugh, 1932.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive - as opposed to domesticated animals that we depend on. Would it radically change things if we had more rhinos in our midst? I kind of suspect it would.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Art, Animal, Kind

  "Pulitzer Winner Elizabeth Kolbert on Mass Extinctions - and Our Own Eventual One". Interview With Benjy Hansen-Bundy, www.motherjones.com. February 4, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against.

  Ben Stein

  Beautiful, People, Tree

  Ben Stein (2010). “The Real Stars: In Today's America, Who Are the True Heroes?”, p.7, ReadHowYouWant.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Then, of course, through the umbilical link we all tumble backwards down the spiralling DNA staircase to one common ancestor in Africa, and before that some bunch of curious monkeys. Down and down we go unto the sea, unto the dust, the single cellular dust. What impulse drove one cell to become two? What yearning pulled the fish on to the land? What caused apes to walk upright? Some invisible magnetic pull. Is there a difference between attraction and intention? Where is evolution taking us?

  Russell Brand

  Dna, Cells, Dust

  Russell Brand (2014). “Revolution”, p.66, Ballantine Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think I'm fascinated with history and - just in general. And I'm always interested in how did - how did this come to be? Why is this the way it is? And even singing classical voice, I quickly became more and more interested with early music, baroque voice. And that became an obsession to me - just figuring out how - who are the ancestors of whatever it is.

  Cecile McLorin Salvant

  Thinking, Voice, Singing

  "Jazz Singer Cécile McLorin Salvant Doesn't Want To Sound 'Clean And Pretty'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 4, 2015.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are more than 100 million African women who go topless at some point in the day, each and every day, to honor both God and our ancestors. So being in a country like America where nothing is hated more than the image of the black woman, even by black people'because her womb produces the black man and makes us black'I find it of grave importance to implement African images, and especially to produce media images that acknowledge the sexual power and fertility of black women.

  Kola Boof

  Country, Men, America

  7 Copy quote

• I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not.

  Laura Lippman

  New York, Attitude, Past

  Interview with Jon Jordan, www.bookbrowse.com.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are definitely recurring themes in humanity's relationship with our environment. The biggest is probably adaptation, because humans are incredibly good at adapting to new environments in relatively short periods of time. The ancestors of Homo sapiens started leaving Africa over one million years ago, moving from warm, tropical climates into the freezing wilderness of Europe and the desert ecosystems of the Middle East.

  Annalee Newitz

  Moving, Years, Europe

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I realize the importance of retelling those stories is so that, one, we don't forget what our ancestors had to do so we can be where we are, and two, to just educate the newer generation. I'm being educated by all these films ['Race' and 'Selma'] and the things I've had the opportunity to be a part of, and kids even younger than me are being educated, too. It's important to make sure those stories never die.

  Stephan James

  Kids, Opportunity, Two

  "Stephan James on His Breakout Role as Jesse Owens in Race". Interview with Ronda Racha Penrice, www.theroot.com. February 16, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As far as benefits to reading historical novels, there are several! For one thing, you learn about life in another era. Secondly, these novels help us to develop a deeper understanding of the legacy of women who came before us and the strides made by our ancestors.

  Mary Pope Osborne

  Reading, Historical Novels, Understanding

  Source: www.yabookshelf.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't think that anything of any consequence is known a priori: all our knowledge is built up by modifying the lore passed on to us by our ancestors in light of our experiences, and the best a philosopher can do is to learn as much about what has been discovered in various empirical fields, and use it to try to craft an improved synthesis.

  Philip Kitcher

  Thinking, Light, Trying

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our ancestors are looking for us even if we're not looking for them. And by our ancestors I mean our bloodlines and the ancestors of the place where we live and our spiritual kin who go beyond our biological families. We could be walking around carrying an entire ancestral history of the wrong kind for us.

  Robert Moss

  Spiritual, Mean, Kind

  "If You Want To Be A Shaman, Start At The Breakfast Table. An Interview with Dreamer Robert Moss". Interview with Krysta Gibson, nhne-pulse.org.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We need to consider ancestral cleansing. If we're willing to clear our energy fields of the ancestral energies we don't want, then we are ready to do something really interesting and beautiful which is to claim a connection with the wisdom of the kinds of ancestors we do want to be in contact with. But we can't do this until we've cleaned out the lower stuff that is hindering us.

  Robert Moss

  Beautiful, Interesting, Energy

  11 Copy quote

• Over millions of years the viruses in our genome mutate more and more so the look less and less and less recognizable as viruses and so if there was a virus that infected our pre mammal ancestors like 250 million years ago, which it probably did, we can't see it because it just looks totally random.

  Carl Zimmer

  Years, Mammals, Viruses

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I mean, in the history of poetry there have been a lot poetries where you have to inherit the position of poet from your ancestors and I think that if you just leave anyone to become a poet based on an aristocratic society, then a lot of people are left out who might have something to offer.

  Edward Hirsch

  Mean, Thinking, People

  "Do MFA Programs Hurt Poetry?". Big Think interview, bigthink.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who foolishly pride themselves on their nobility mistake that which makes them noble, for it is only the virtue of their ancestors that gives them noble blood.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Mistake, Pride, Blood

  4 Copy quote