Ancestry is the connection we have with our past, the lineage that defines us. Quotes about ancestry encapsulate the importance of knowing where we come from and understanding our roots. They remind us of the rich tapestry of history that has shaped and molded our identity.
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
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
In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from. — Alex Haley
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
We must strive to become good ancestors. — Ralph Nader
Walk like you have 4000 ancestors behind you. — Sahil Bloom
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
If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely. — Philip Glass
I looked up my family tree and found out I was the sap. — Rodney Dangerfield
It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance. — Lewis Thomas
Let us be the ancestors our descendants will thank. — Winona LaDuke
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
There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. — Helen Keller
Short Ancestry Quotes
My forefathers didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat. — Will Rogers
I don’t fight for the money. I fight for my legacy. I fight for history. I fight for my people. — Khabib Nurmagomedov
You can just never forget where you came from. — Giannis Antetokounmpo
Men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes. — William Winwood Reade
Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage. — Saadi Shirazi
I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind. — John Diefenbaker
Part of my heritage being Korean, it's going to be interesting going to Korea and answering these questions dealing with North and South Korea. — Rick Yune
My heart trembles when I reflect that God is just — Thomas Jefferson
Because of my Portuguese heritage, I have an interest in all of the instrumentation that comes from Portugal and Brazil as well. — Nelly Furtado
My family has existed in eastern Kentucky for as long as there are records. — James David Vance
When I was a child, our whole family cooked. All my cousins cooked. All my aunts and uncles cooked. It was part of our heritage. — Mario Batali
My most memorable meal is every Thanksgiving. I love the food: The turkey and stuffing; the sweet potatoes and rice, which come from my mother's Southern heritage; the mashed potatoes, which come from my wife's Midwestern roots; the Campbell's green bean casserole; and of course, pumpkin pie. — Douglas Conant
Whatever good I have accomplished as an actress I believe came in direct proportion to my efforts to portray black women who have made positive contributions to my heritage. — Cicely Tyson
Given my heritage and the ordeal of my childhood, I sometimes wonder why I myself am not insane. Maybe I am. — Dean Koontz
Honoring Ancestors 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
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
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
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
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
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 do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children — Chief Seattle
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
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
Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself. — Thomas Harris
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
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
Family History Quotes
Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponent will do it for you. — Mark Twain
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are. — Madeleine L'Engle
Our family has lived in Iran for 2,500 years, and Iranian Jewry has the long history in that land. — Moshe Katsav
If you're familiar with the famous Hatfield-McCoy family feud back in the 1860s, '70s and '80s in the United States, my family was an integral part of that. — James David Vance
When it comes to politics and elections, far too many Christians spend more time appealing to family, history and tradition, culture, racial expediency, and personal preference than they do to what the Bible teaches. — Tony Evans
The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family... The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love. — Pope John Paul II
Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents. — John Taylor Gatto
My heart goes out to victims and survivors of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and to their families. This disaster will go down in history books as one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history. — Ellen Tauscher
What I love about the stories of the Great Migration is that this is not ancient history; this is living history. Most people of color can find someone in their own family who had experienced a migration of some kind, knowing the sense of dislocation, longing and fortitude. — Isabel Wilkerson
I grew up in a family where no one had written a newspaper or magazine article about anybody in my family for a hundred years, right? — Michael Saylor
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
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
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
You are a child of God. He is father of your spirit. Spiritually you are of noble birth, the offspring of the King of Heaven. Fix that truth in your mind and hold to it. However many generations in your mortal ancestry, no matter what race or people you represent, the pedigree of your spirit can be written on a single line. You are a child of God! — Boyd K. Packer
No amount of diversification can replace investment research. If you want to invest, you have to learn. — Naved Abdali
It should be remembered that hundreds of people of African ancestry also walked the Trail of Tears with the Cherokee during the forced removal of 1838-1839. Although we know about the terrible human suffering of our native people and the members of other tribes during the removal, we rarely hear of those black people who also suffered. — Wilma Mankiller
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
We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. — Penelope Lively
Generational curses are actually blessings in disguise; the mistakes were already made for you, now all you have to do is apply the solutions. — Isaac Mashman
Our ancestry streches back through the life forms and into the stars, back into the beginnings of the primeval fireball. This universe is a single multiform energetic unfolding of matter, mind, intelligence and life. — Brian Swimme
The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world. He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present and points the way to its new birth. He is at once the product and preceptor of his times. — Norman Bethune
I’m from Dagestan, I’m born in Dagestan, and Dagestan is a different level for people living a tough life, people living in the mountains. — Khabib Nurmagomedov
We search through historical data looking for anomalous patterns that we would not expect to occur at random. — Jim Simons
As someone who has enjoyed visiting Russia in the past and can also claim a degree of Russian ancestry, it would make me happy to say yes. However, as a gay man, I must decline. — Wentworth Miller
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. — W. S. Gilbert
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours. — William Ralph Inge
There are many people who could claim and learn from their Indian ancestry, but because of the fear their parents and grandparents knew, because of past and present prejudice against Indian people, that part of their heritage is clouded or denied. — Joseph Bruchac
All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution? — Lynn Margulis
Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality. — Eric Hoffer
Every living being is also a fossil. Within it, all the way down to the microscopic structure of its proteins, it bears the traces if not the stigmata of its ancestry. — Jacques Monod
Being a mixed-blood person of Ojibway and European ancestry, I always found that I only heard one side of the story - that was the conquerers' side, the side of the French Jesuit missionaries that came to live in what is now Ontario. — Joseph Boyden
Nobility of birth is like a cipher; it has no power in itself, like wealth or talent; but, it tells with all the power of a cipher when added to either of the other two. — John Frederick Boyes
The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity. — Henry Louis Gates
Every social trait labelled masculine or feminine is in truth a human trait. It is our human right to develop and contribute our talents whatever our race, sex, religion, ancestry, age. Human rights are indivisible! — Wilma Scott Heide
Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. — Harlan Stone
Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. — Harlan F. Stone
Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine. — Terry Pratchett
It is a shame for a man to desire honor because of his noble progenitors, and not to deserve it by his own virtue. — Saint John Chrysostom
In Conclusion
These quotes often highlight the significance of honoring and preserving our ancestry. They encourage us to embrace our heritage and learn from the wisdom and traditions passed down through generations. Quotes about ancestry also emphasize the importance of recognizing the diversity and interconnectedness of humanity, reminding us that we are all linked through our shared ancestry.
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Citation
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