Quotes About Ancestors

Our spiritual ancestors have also given birth to us, and they, tol, continue to give birth to us.

Die Großväter sind die Lehrer, die eigentlichen Philosophen jedes Menschen, sie reißen immer den Vorhang auf, den die andern fortwährend zuziehen.

History is story, too.

And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing.

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. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.

Seldom is the claim made that black Americans alive at this moment are worse off than if their ancestors had been left in Africa. Any attempt to make that case with statistics on income, life expectancy, or numerous other variables would collapse like a house of cards.

Faith simply is, and what the religious traditions of the world do is to give us guidance as to how to interpret our own experience in the light of what our ancestors have made of it over the centuries.

The dead did not call to me from the underworlds, but spoke to me from the rustling pine needles. They did not gaze down upon me from the skyworlds, but smiled up at me from a bead of dew trembling precariously upon a blade of grass. They told me I have never been alone. Not for one instant. Every soul is a thread in the fabric of the world. All I must do to see my relatives is gaze into the shining water that sleeps

Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear fucking weapons.

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations — such is a pleasure beyond compare.

White eyes, Nerburn. You've got white eyes. The boy probably left it there. This is what I mean. Watch our little children. They might get a bike and ride it, then just leave it somewhere, like that. You say they are irresponsible. They are just being like their ancestors who believed that you owned something only so long as you needed it. Then you passed it to someone else.

When you knew I was coming?" I said. "I wrote it when I knew I wanted to speak. I went to my hill and spoke to my grandfathers. They gave me that song. They gave it to me in the wind. They said I had too much anger to speak. They told me that anger is only for the one who speaks. It never opens the heart of one who listens.

Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and do I embody these lives again? Have I lived before in the past as a specific personality, and did I progress so far in that life that I am now able to seek a solution? I do not know. Buddha left the question open, and I like to assume that he himself did not know with certainty. In the meantime it is important to ensure that I do not stand at the end with empty hands.

But the truth is that the unconscious is always there beforehand as a potential system of psychic functioning handed down by generations of man. Consciousness is a late-born descendant of the unconscious psyche. It would certainly show perversity if we tried to explain the lives of our ancestors in terms of their late descendants; and it is just as wrong, in my opinion, to regard the unconscious as a derivative of consciousness. We are nearer the truth if we put it the other way round.

When we see what blood we spill, we call out to the gods, but they have forsaken us. We shout to the ancestors; only the sound of the waters answers back. We are left to the mercy which we have for each other.

Humans do seem to be the most intelligent species on Earth, but this wasn't inevitable. Things could easily have turned out otherwise. If the chimplike ancestors of humans had not moved out of the forest and into the savanna, the whole course of human evolution might not have happened. If our early ancestors had been unable to adapt to their new environment, then chimpanzees might be the most intelligent animals on Earth without being much different than they are today.

I imagine this is how it must be with our ancestors. They watch us closely, full of love and concern, sometimes whispering encouragement through a crack, but mostly just satisfied to know that we are happy.

Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neurotic - that is, divided against themselves. If they had lived in a period and in a milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly experienced and not merely seen from the outside, they would have been spared this division with themselves.

To a Scot, the past clings like sand to wet feet, and is carried about as a burden. The many ghosts are always a part of them, inescapable.

Sister?" Jessie Kay scowled. "Do I really look like his sister? I clearly come from grade-A stock while his ancestors made a few poor choices along the way.

When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating; you even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought records. -- Vina, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"), Star Trek, 1966

Xander, have you ever googled "Mayflower" and "Billingtons"? Because I did. And it turns out one of your ancestors almost blew up the ship. And another one got hanged for murder after they landed in America. Ed. Note: 100% TRUE (you can google this)

Our responsibility is not to speculate endlessly about the possible futures of our daughter species, but to become, with as much panache as we can afford, their ancestors.

By intelligently choosing their sexual partners for their mental abilities, our ancestors became the intelligent force behind the human mind's evolution.