Ancestor Quotes - Page 30

• Life existed on Earth for nearly four billion years before anything remotely resembling a human being showed up. And even then, when we started to branch off from other apes about 10,000,000 years ago, our ancestors looked pretty different.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Years, Earth, Four

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I heard the truth about my name was not Cassius Clay, like I knew a black man in America named John Hawkins. Now, you know who John Hawkins was.He was a slave trader from England. But the white people of that time, if one had five slaves and his name was Jones, they would be called Jones' property. [...] Now that I'm free, now that I'm no longer a slave, then I want a name of my ancestors.

  Muhammad Ali

  Men, Names, White

  Interview with Michael Parkinson, www.mirror.co.uk. June 5, 2016.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientists believe that the invention of clothing in Africa was a key factor in allowing our ancestors to migrate into colder climates and to spread across the globe.

  Ziya Tong

  Believe, Keys, Climate

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Actually, scientists don't know exactly how lice jumped from gorillas to our human ancestors. They speculate that we may have eaten them or perhaps slept in their nests.

  Ziya Tong

  Lice, May, Nests

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have a musical ancestry as much as I have a family ancestry. Honoring those ancestors gives you access to a greater source of appreciation and information than you would have if you were just going on your own ego system.

  Billy Corgan

  Appreciation, Giving, Ego

  "A Conversation with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins". Interview with Sharon London, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As I am from Hawaiʻi, the ocean is part of my culture and who I am. My ancestors were great ocean explorers.

  Nainoa Thompson

  Ocean, Who I Am, Culture

  18 Copy quote

• It's time to respect the treaties our ancestors signed and care for our land, water, and cultures so that they remain healthy for our future generations.

  Winona LaDuke

  Land, Water, Healthy

  6 Copy quote

• Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings.

  Harper Lee

  Battle, Sides, Shame

  Harper Lee (2014). “To Kill a Mockingbird (Enhanced Edition)”, p.7, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Someone accompanies every soul from the other side when it enters this place. Usually it is an ancestor with whom that child shares traits and gifts

  Joy Harjo

  Children, Soul, Sides

  14 Copy quote

• Each famous author of antiquity whom I recover places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of earlier generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds, and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.

  Petrarch

  Writing, Hands, Mind

  16 Copy quote

• What is the problem? We now have aeroplanes which can take them back quicker than the ships used by their ancestors.

  Robert Mugabe

  Ships, Problem, Used

  1923 Copy quote

• Before (the Palestinians) very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they and their ancestors have lived We are the generation of colonizers and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a house.

  Moshe Dayan

  Eye, Gun, Land

  52 Copy quote

• My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.

  Mark Twain

  People, Gentleman, Alive

  6 Copy quote

• We are each born into a situation-a particular body (its race, sex, health...), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation-and born into the stories told of each of these.

  Lewis Hyde

  Sex, Race, Community

  11 Copy quote

• If the work of the city is the remaking or translating of man into a more suitable form than his nomadic ancestors achieved, then might not our current translation of our entire lives into the spiritual form of information seem to make of the entire.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Spiritual, Men, Cities

  Marshall McLuhan (1964). “Understanding media: the extensions of man”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Freedom is where you can live, as pleases a brave heart; where you can live according to the customs and laws of your Fathers; where you are made happy by that which made your most distant ancestors happy.

  Ernst Moritz Arndt

  Father, Heart, Law

  8 Copy quote

• Every action has an ancestor of a thought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Action

  4 Copy quote

• . . . it is difficult for Europeans to appreciate the sentiment. Other nations kill animals by wholesale and kill one another; they exist in a sea of blood. A European said that the reason why in India animals were not killed was because it was supposed that they contained the spirits of ancestors. This reason was worthy of a savage nation who are not many steps from the brute.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Animal, Blood, Sea

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3670, Manonmani Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Men, Example, Purpose

  Dr. Laurence J. Peter (2013). “Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Times”, p.50, Harper Collins

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• So what is the Dreaming? I would say the Dreaming is a non-indigenous term used in its broadest sense to describe the stories of our ancestors and how they shaped the land and how they are still part of the land... Across Aboriginal Australia there are as many different terms for Dreaming as there are language groups

  Hetti Perkins

  Dream, Art, Land

  16 Copy quote

• A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin's theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin."

  Phillip E. Johnson

  Country, Animal, Theory Of Evolution

  19 Copy quote

• You don't need a grand plan, you don't need to go back to the ancestors and rewrite the rules. You just need to take small steps and accumulate small wins.

  Bruce Feiler

  Winning, Small Steps, Small Wins

  "Writer Bruce Feiler". The Tavis Smiley Show, www.pbs.org. March 20, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life in the twentieth century undeniably has ... such richness, joy and adventure as were unknown to our ancestors except in their dreams.

  Arthur Compton

  Dream, Adventure, Joy

  7 Copy quote

• Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm, healthfulness being their chief object.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Dark, Army, Water

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter IV, Section 9,

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Set before us the conduct of our own British ancestors, who defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests; in short against the gates of earth and hell.

  John Adams

  Kings, Rights, Tyrants

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.462

  4 Copy quote

  Show source