Ancestor Quotes - Page 9

• Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Children, Play, Evil

  Mahatma Gandhi (1948). “Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth”, p.276, Courier Corporation

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• 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

  Inspirational, Power, People

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• Let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind.

  Plato

  Fall, Men, Soldier

  Plato (2016). “The Complete Works of Plato (Unabridged): From the greatest Greek philosopher, known for The Republic, Symposium, Apology, Phaedrus, Laws, Crito, Phaedo, Timaeus, Meno, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Parmenides, Protagoras, Statesman and Critias”, p.650, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is between you and the furry creatures your distant ancestors left behind when they set out to take over the world.

  Bill Bryson

  Horse, Zebras, Differences

  Bill Bryson (2014). “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, p.412, Lulu Press, Inc

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• We humans are in such a strange position—we are still animals whose behavior reflects that of our ancestors, yet we are unique—unlike any other animal on earth. Our distinctiveness separates us and makes it easy to forget where we came from. Perhaps dogs help us remember the depth of our roots, reminding us—the animals at the other end of the leash—that we may be special, but we are not alone. No wonder we call them our best friends.

  Patricia McConnell

  Dog, Animal, Unique

  Patricia McConnell, Ph.D. (2009). “The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs”, p.225, Ballantine Books

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• The most important lesson of American history is the promise of the unexpected. None of our ancestors would have imagined settling way over here on this unknown continent. So we must continue to have society that is hospitable to the unexpected, which allows possibilities to develop beyond our own imaginings.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Promise, Important, Lessons

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession's phlegm, and needs no ancestors.

  Aaron Hill

  Self, Shadow, Needs

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• The wisdom of our parents, grandparents, ancestors. In each individual life, it seems, we must first reject that wisdom, then later come to appreciate it.

  Tad Williams

  Wisdom, Appreciate, Grandparent

  Tad Williams (1998). “Otherland: City of Golden Shadow”, p.109, Penguin

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• There are very few really brilliant men who have not had at least one madman among their ancestors.

  Andre Maurois

  Men, Brilliant, Madmen

  "The Silence of Colonel Bramble". Book by Andre Maurois, 1918.

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• I do not regard the rise of woman as a bad sign. Rather do I fancy that her traditional subordination was itself an artificial and undesirable condition based on Oriental influences. Our virile Teutonic ancestors did not think their wives unworthy to follow them into battle, or scorn to dream of winged Valkyries bearing them to Valhalla.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dream, Women, Thinking

  H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, James Turner (1976). “Selected Letters 1934-1937”, Arkham House Publishers

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• [Footnote:] Pliny the Elder described a Whale called "Balaena or Whirlpool, which is so long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground." This brings up again the old question: Are the classics doomed? Our ancestors believed that four years of this sort of information would inevitably produce a President, or at least a Cabinet Member. It didn't seem to work out that way.

  Will Cuppy

  Years, Whales, Two

  "The Whale". "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes". Book by Will Cuppy, 1931.

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• It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Grandfather, Criminals, Noses

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2000). “The Left Hand of Darkness”, p.103, Penguin

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• If new species arise very rapidly in small, peripherally isolated local populations, then the great expectation of insensibly graded fossil sequences is a chimera. A new species does not evolve in the area of its ancestors; it does not arise from the slow transformation of all its forbears.
  co-author with Niles Eldridge

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Expectations, Population, Doe

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• When we affect to condemn savages, we should remember that by doing so we asperse our own progenitors; for they were savages also.Who can swear that among the naked British barbarians sent to Rome to be stared at more than 1500 years ago, the ancestor of Bacon might not have been found?--Why, among the very Thugs of India, or the bloody Dyaks of Borneo, exists the germ of all that is intellectually elevated and grand. We are all of us--Anglo-Saxons, Dyaks and Indians--sprung from one head and made in one image.

  Herman Melville

  Thug, Rome, Years

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• You can't have a Russian household without vodka. It's just something to wash everything down with. I can't remember a time when I didn't drink vodka, either in Russia or here. I don't think there's ever a wrong time to start drinking it. My ancestors drank it, and if I ever have any children, they'll be drinking it.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Children, Drinking, Thinking

  "Gary Shteyngart's Rules for Vodka Drinking" by Ben Detrick, www.esquire.com. August 9, 2010.

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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 seem to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Believe, Hero

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• Southerners, whose ancestors a hundred years ago knew the horrors of a homeland devastated by war, are particularly determined that war shall never come to us again. All Americans understand the basic lessons of history: that we need to be resolute and able to protect ourselves, to prevent threats and domination by others.

  Jimmy Carter

  War, Years, Needs

  United States. President (1977-1981 : Carter), Jimmy Carter (1978). “Jimmy Carter”

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• I dream of songs. I dream they fall down through the centuries, from my distant ancestors, and come to me. I dream of lullabies and sea shanties and keening cries and rhythms and stories and backbeats.

  Rosanne Cash

  Music, Dream, Song

  Rosanne Cash (2010). “Composed: A Memoir”, p.8, Penguin

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• Rastafari is our king or emperor, and being a king, being an emperor you've been taught all the ways of the ancestors. With the knowledge and teachings and studying his majesty, I've learned to put all these principles and precepts into the music, so that is how it inspires me to be singin' good songs and makin' good music for the people. Natural.

  Sizzla

  Song, Kings, Teaching

  Source: www.thepier.org

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• When, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark.

  Jack London

  Stars, Dark, Night

  Jack London (1992). “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.17, Wordsworth Editions

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• It's only when movement becomes the most natural state in our lives that we can finally begin to enjoy the motion. And it's only when standing still becomes impossible that we can finally embrace the kinds of changes that are inevitable in our lives.
  We were not designed to stand still. If we were, we'd have at least three legs. We were designed to move. Our bodies are bodies that have walked across vast continents. Our bodies are bodies that have carried objects of art and war over great distances. We are no less mobile than our ancestors. We are athletes. We are warriors. We are human.

  John Bingham

  Art, War, Distance

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• The idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Drama, Struggle, Fighting

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• the voices of our ancestors telling of our glorious past, our culture, and what it means to be an Indian.

  Allen Sapp

  Mean, Past, Voice

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• My self . . . is a dramatic ensemble. Here a prophetic ancestor makes his appearance. Here a brutal hero shouts. Here an alcoholic bon vivant argues with a learned professor. Here a lyric muse, chronically love-struck, raises her eyes to heaven. Her papa steps forward, uttering pedantic protests. Here the indulgent uncle intercedes. Here the aunt babbles gossip. Here the maid giggles lasciviously. And I look upon it all with amazement, the sharpened pen in my left hand.

  Paul Klee

  Uncles, Hero, Eye

  Paul Klee, Felix Klee (1968). “The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918”, p.177, Univ of California Press

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• In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.

  Miriam Makeba

  Animal, Past, People

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