127 Ancestor Quotes to Inspire and Connect

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Famous Ancestor Quotes

We must strive to become good ancestors. — Ralph Nader

Let us be the ancestors our descendants will thank. - Winona LaDuke

Let us be the ancestors our descendants will thank. — Winona LaDuke

They who derive their worth from their ancestors resemble potatoes, the most valuable part of which is underground. — Francis Bacon

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors. — Voltaire

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

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future. — Herbert Spencer

Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn. — Marian Wright Edelman

After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts - like a Chinese nest of boxes - oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front - in our ancestors, back and back until. — Walter de La Mare

Walk like you have 4000 ancestors behind you. — Sahil Bloom

So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants. — Tacitus

Your great great grandfather lived most of his life without running water or electricity, and he was probably more racist than you are. You’ve never met him, but without him, you wouldn’t exist. — Tim Urban

The most important question we must ask ourselves is, 'Are we being good ancestors?' — Jonas Salk

Birth, ancestry, and that which you yourself have not achieved can hardly be called your own — Greek Proverbs

When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth. — Alex Haley

To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. — Chief Seattle

Short Ancestor Quotes

  • We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children — Chief Seattle
  • Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself. — Thomas Harris
  • We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. — American Indian Proverbs
  • As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion. — Butterfly McQueen
  • Our primal ancestors were likely stronger and healthier than we are today. — Mark Sisson
  • You can just never forget where you came from. — Giannis Antetokounmpo
  • The ancestor of every action is thought. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • No man can outwit their ancestors. — African Proverbs
  • Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone. — John Ciardi
  • We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors' wisdom. — Maya Angelou

Ancestor Image Quotes

Ancestor quote The ancestor of every action is a thought.
The ancestor of every action is a thought.

Spiritual Ancestors Quotes

Walking. I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands. — Linda Hogan

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. — Nhat Hanh

Though we have rightly applauded our ancestors for their spiritual achievements ... those of us who prevail today will have done no small thing. — Neal A. Maxwell

I feel that the ancestors are that covering that will cover me. I feel like I can only be enveloped in them spiritually and physically. — Alice Walker

There's a quality we could call vertical attention, which is an attention upward toward ancestors, spiritual states, angels, gods. — Robert Bly

Everyone, no matter what their cultural background, has a right to discover the sacred in nature; to heal and be redeemed spiritually by nature; and to revere the ancestors. We are all haunted and saved by our memories. — Martha Brooks

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

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

The Good Ancestor Quotes

I am not carrying on a war of extermination against the Romans. I am contending for honor and empire. My ancestors yielded to Roman valour. I am endeavouring that others, in their turn, will be obliged to yield to my good fortune, and my valour. — Hannibal

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

Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors. — Plutarch

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today. — Confucius

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity. [Lat., Majorum gloria posteris lumen est, neque bona neque mala in occulto patitur.] — Sallust

When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm. — Chinua Achebe

We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength. — Ishmael Beah

But because their ancestors were men of righteousness, shall we consent to the abuses of their degenerate descendants? Because they did us a great good, would we be guilty if we prevented them from doing us evil? — Jose Rizal

Ancestor Worship Quotes

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents. — Alan Dundes

We were not the victims of ancestor worship. We had the benefits of a fresh start. — Matthew D. Miller

Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children. — Carl Sagan

The ancestor of every action is a thought. —Ralph Waldo Emerson — David Allen

People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship. — Maxine Hong Kingston

No Christian assumes the Jews are right about everything, but they knew God during tens of centuries during which my ancestors were worshiping trees and eating each other, so when they talk, I listen. — Stephen Graham

Behind everything in London is something else, and, behind that, is something else still; and so on through the centuries, so that London as we see her is only the latest manifestation of other Londons, and to lover her is to plunge into ancestor-worship. — Henry Vollam Morton

Chinese culture in general is not very religious. Confucianism is more a code of ethics than a religion, and ancestor worship is a way for parents to control you even after theyre dead. — David Henry Hwang

Building the future holds more attraction than ancestor worship, whichever ancestor we're talking about. — Douglas Alexander

Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. — Joshua

Honoring Ancestors Quotes

Honor, justice, and humanity, call upon us to hold, and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children, but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. — John Dickinson

Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon. — Benjamin Disraeli

American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them. — Spike Lee

Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. — Thomas Jefferson

I have no urns, no dusty monuments; No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales Of long descents, to boast false honors from. — Ben Jonson

The most-honored ancestors of your matriarch besmirched the season of the orange blossom. — Nick Bakay

No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity. — Alexis de Tocqueville

From our ancestors come our names from our virtues our honor. — Proverbs

Honor among thieves is the ancestor of all honor. — John McCarthy

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

Ancestry Quotes

The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment. — Franz Boas

America today is running on the momentum of a godly ancestry, and when that momentum runs down, God help America. — Omar N. Bradley

As a Salvadoran with Palestinian ancestry, I'm sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear. — Nayib Bukele

My forefathers didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat. — Will Rogers

The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

I don’t fight for the money. I fight for my legacy. I fight for history. I fight for my people. — Khabib Nurmagomedov

The last 200 years of your ancestry, contain 127 romantic relationships, each involving at least one critical sex moment and most of them probably involving deep love. You’re the product of 127 romances, just in the last 200 years alone. — Tim Urban

Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident. — Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

No amount of diversification can replace investment research. If you want to invest, you have to learn. — Naved Abdali

I came from Iowa, south central Iowa. It was a very rural area. I saw a lot more hogs growing up than I saw people. — Peggy Whitson

Family Ancestry Quotes

Wealth is also defined by family, connection to our ancestry, and our best vision of the future. All of these find their inner spirit, their constancy, and their strength in the values that shape our thinking and our actions. — Nainoa Thompson

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

There are many kinds of conceit, but the chief one is to let people know what a very ancient and gifted family one descends from. — Benvenuto Cellini

Those who have nothing else to recommend them to the respect of others but only their blood, cry it up at a great rate, and have their mouth perpetually full of it. They swell and vapor, and you are sure to hear of their families and relations every third word. — Pierre Charron

We are very fond of some families because they can be traced beyond the Conquest, whereas indeed the farther back, the worse, as being the nearer allied to a race of robbers and thieves. — Daniel Defoe

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. — Edmund Burke

Of what use are pedigrees, or to be thought of noble blood, or the display of family portraits, O Ponticus? — Juvenal

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another. — Seneca

Great families of yesterday we show, And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who. — Daniel Defoe

You can change so many things in your life, but you cannot change where you come from. It's something that you have to deal with: the role everybody plays in his family, no matter if he likes it or not. — Maren Ade

People Writing About Ancestor

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Read quotes by Winona LaDuke

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Read quotes by Francis Bacon

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Read quotes by Ralph Ellison

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More Ancestor Quotes

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children. — Crazy Horse

We, today, stand on the shoulders of our predecessors who have gone before us. We, as their successors, must catch the torch of freedom and liberty passed on to us by our ancestors. We cannot lose in this battle. — Benjamin E. Mays

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

My father chose my name , and my last name was chosen by my ancestors . That’s enough, I myself choose my way — Ali Shariati

White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time, since plantation owners did their best to prevent any written accounts of uprisings. — Huey Newton

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history? — Marcus Tullius Cicero

If we are to be the last of the White men who conquered the world; if we are finally to be overwhelmed by a pack of rats, let us at least face the death of our race as our ancestors faced their death - like man. Let us not crawl down amongst the rats begging for mercy or trying to out-sneak them and pretend to be rats ourselves! — George Lincoln Rockwell

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

We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country. . . to seek for gold in the far west . . . Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. . . . His presence here is . . . an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be allowed for corn? — Red Cloud

If fructose sounds dangerous, it can be, but only in fast and large doses. For most of human evolution the only big, rapidly digestible source of fructose that our ancestors could acquire was honey. — Daniel Lieberman

To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations, as well as the security and wellbeing of our subjects, is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart. — Hirohito

Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas [Greece] and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you. — Alexander The Great

Mushrooms are miniature pharmaceutical factories, and of the thousands of mushroom species in nature, our ancestors and modern scientists have identified several dozen that have a unique combination of talents that improve our health. — Paul Stamets

The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury; ... [and] I have been appointed leader of the Greeks. — Arrian

A full 8 percent of the human genome—over 250 million letters of DNA—is a remnant of ancient retroviruses that infected ancestors of our species millennia ago. — Jennifer Doudna

It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution. — Havelock Ellis

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

Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic-it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor. — John Taylor Gatto

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

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you. — Ted Hughes

Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things. — Francis Collins

Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks. — Max Tegmark

We must wake up to the insane reality of our time. We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors condemned. — Thor Heyerdahl

Whereas our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil. — Richard Allen

I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got plenty of ancestors who played out more tortured hands. — Ariel Gore

‎Our ancestors took this land. They took it and made it and held it. We do not give up what our ancestors gave us. They came across the sea and they fought here, and they built here and they're buried here. This is our land, mixed with our blood, strengthened with our bone. Ours! — Bernard Cornwell

In Conclusion

Ancestor quotes promote a sense of gratitude for the sacrifices made by previous generations. They emphasize the role our ancestors play in shaping our identity and provide a reminder that we are a product of their legacy. These quotes encourage us to cherish our family history and connect with our roots. They inspire us to carry forward the values and traditions instilled by our ancestors, guiding us in leading meaningful and purposeful lives.

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