Ancestor Quotes - Page 3

• And, you know, the fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor, and we all have a common ancestry with the plant in the lobby. This is what evolution tells us. And, it's true. It's kind of unbelievable.

  Jeff Hawkins

  Believe, Facts, Ancestry

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• I don't have to look up my family tree, because I know that I'm the sap.

  Fred Allen

  Funny, Family, Witty

  Fred Allen (2008). “Much Ado About Me”, p.200, Wildside Press LLC

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• Any living cell carries with it the experience of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors.

  Max Delbruck

  Science, Cells, Years

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• People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

  Edmund Burke

  Inspirational, Family, Memories

  Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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• My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions.

  Elayne Boosler

  Biblical, Men, Years

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• As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Love, Conceited, America

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.257, Vintage

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• I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.

  John Shelby Spong

  Thinking, Self, Looks

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• Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

  Edward Dahlberg

  Writing, Agriculture, Farming

  Edward Dahlberg (1964). “Alms for oblivion: essays”

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• Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

  Ralph Ellison

  Relationship, Cousin, People

  Time Magazine, March 27, 1964.

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• Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

  Voltaire

  Country, Uprising, Needs

  "Mérope". Play by Voltaire. Act I, Scene III, 1743.

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• The ancestor of every action is a thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Learning, Knowledge, Positive Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.53, Penguin

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• Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.

  Pete Seeger

  Religious, Years, America

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• We must create the Georgia that our ancestors dreamed of, the Georgia that we dream of.

  Mikhail Saakashvili

  Dream, Georgia

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• We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man.

  Richard Leakey

  Men, Light, Connections

  "A Wealth of Human Fossils Could Soon Be Destroyed". Interview with Stefan Aust and Thilo Thielke, www.spiegel.de. October 27, 2005.

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• Man is physical as well as metaphysical, a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Misfits, Metaphysical

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.202, Graphic Arts Books

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• I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Succeed, Bears, Dignity

  "History of England" by Thomas B. Macaulay, Vol. I, (Ch. 1), 1849-1861.

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• There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.

  Claude Vorilhon

  Mistake, Intolerance, Violation

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• I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

  Don Marquis

  Blood, Literature, Too Much

  Don Marquis (2006). “The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel”, p.136, Penguin

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• Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.

  Donald Johanson

  Skeletons, Hands, Legs

  "The Quest for Human Origins". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. January 25, 1991.

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• I've run the marathon several times, so I definitely don't look like the Great Ancestor!

  George Takei

  Running, Looks, Marathon

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Big cities are chaotic. And chaos for humans - who have experience from their ancestors - is the last step before conflict. So, in the park, every kind of visual contradiction has been eliminated.

  John Hench

  Cities, Lasts, Parks

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• For over two billion years, through the apparent fancy of her endless differentiations and metamorphosis the Cell, as regards its basic physiological mechanisms, has remained one and the same. It is life itself, and our true and distant ancestor.

  Albert Claude

  Cells, Years, Two

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• Humans are upsetting a fragile balance that their own human ancestors established.

  Joan D. Vinge

  Upset, Balance, Humans

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• I think these people have betrayed or have forgotten their ancestors.

  Zhu Rongji

  Thinking, People, Betrayed

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• Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.

  John Ciardi

  Modern Life, Gone, Rich

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