Ancestry Quotations

The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.

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.

I discovered that there is Indian blood in my ancestry on my father's side - a fact that had not been talked about in my family. No wonder I've often been cast in exotic roles - Indian princesses, Russian revolutionaries, Algerians, Gypsies and Greeks.

If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry - yours and mine - back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet

Some people will deny anything that displeases or scares them: unusual pain in their chests, unwanted lumps beneath their skin, or the fact that humans share ancestry with apes are a few examples. Another is climate change.

None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married.

Many people believe that determining who is 'black' is rather easy, a task simplified by the administration of the one-drop rule. Under the one-drop rule, any discernible African ancestry stamps a person as 'black.'

I knew my mother was - well, her ancestry dated back to John Quincy Adams, so she was totally not Latina. She was definitely whatever you call it - white bread, shall we say?

I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.

Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty.

It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal.

People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects.

We have completed our mission to the EU, now we are on our way to the Balkans. Our ancestors went on horse back, we are going by plane.

Worshippers of the demigods go to the demigods, the worshippers of the ancestors go to the ancestors, and the worshippers of the ghosts go to the ghosts, but My devotees come to Me (and are not born again).

The egg it is the source of all To everyone's ancestral hall.

...the original mixed ancestry of the Jews and their subsequent history of intermixture with every people among whom they have lived and continue to live...

When I arrive somewhere, I often ask local residents about their ancestry and tales and legends of the area. Enthusiastic villagers could help find the location and offer to lead the way. That helps a lot.

It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.

. . . she had prejudices on the side of ancestry; she had a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them.

I got very interested, and I started researching my own ancestors. It's been a passion and a hobby since then.

I have drunk deep of the waters of my ancestors.

I don't feel like it's right because I feel like all our ancestors came over here and they had to become legal citizens. Why shouldn't every one else? I don't care who you are.

I am glad my ancestors arrived on the Mayflower, but I am gladder that there are nine generations between us.

I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.

I didn't know much about my Native American ancestry, but as I got older I became more interested in it.

Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done.

Is anyone simply by birth to be applauded or punished?

We have speakers each month, but the real thing is to get people involved who are interested in looking into their ancestry and helping the historical society preserve records into a usable form. Hopefully we are meeting the needs of these people and the society as well.

While we know a lot about how teeth and facial structures changed over time, it was thought that once our ancestors became bipedal, there were few, if any, changes in the ankle associated with walking on two legs. Now we know there were slightly different ways to be bipedal.

We're lucky our ancestors came here. It makes you realize the sacrifices they experienced.

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

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.

We owe it to our ancestors and our children to keep this celebration going. We just can't stop. This is so important for us,

The scholar without good breeding is a nitpicker; the philosopher a cynic; the soldier a brute and everyone else disagreeable.

Other ancestors that you have can also be certified. The list is always growing.

For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans.

It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live.

I'm crazy about Dublin. If you went back 3,000 years in my ancestry you wouldn't find a drop of Irish blood in the veins, but I love the place.

My life shall be free and broad and great, and I will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancestry. I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwise?

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.

There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.

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

Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.

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.

It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry.

Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace.

It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.

It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.

I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers.

Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves.

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.

If your descent is from heroic sires, Show in your life a remnant of their fires.

It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry.

What is birth to a man if it shall be a stain to his dead ancestors to have left such an offspring?

I get anxious. That lovely Jewish guilt that comes with ancestry.

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

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?

Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

You carry a very heavy burden, Prime Minister. You carry the hopes and dreams of every Japanese alive today and those of our honored ancestors. You literally carry Japan upon your back.

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea

Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.

The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who...looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space...on the infinite highway of the air.

All these ancestors of mine, when they arrived here, there weren't restrictions on them as there are now. Who's to say whether they would have been able to come themselves if there had been restrictions? But I'm glad they did, because here I am.

For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans.

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.

High birth is an accident, not a virtue.

We are all creatures of our ancestry! There is no right and wrong, objectively.

Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage.

So what we can answer [as geneticists] is questions about biology, about biological ancestry. But to make any sense of that historically we have to contextualize it -- the archaeology, the linguistic pattern, even the climatology.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

People like to trace their ancestry.

A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.

Born in a cellar, and living in a garret.

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.

High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.

It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

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.

Mr. Lincoln, I believe your grandfather was a farmer in Pennsylvania,

No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.

One who is proud of ancestry is like a turnip; there is nothing good of him but that which is underground

My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat.

My ancestors didn't come over in the Mayflower -- they met the boat.

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

Those who boast of their decent, brag on what they owe to others.

What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood, of all the Howards.

Stillness and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or at least must always work their limbs and features.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

You, the sons of the pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry, must make your lives as worthy as they made theirs. They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.

Sire, I am my own Rudolph of Hapsburg.

Pedigree and ancestry and what we ourselves have not achieved, I scarcely recognize as our own.

Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own.

The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.