Quotes About Heritage

The devil white man cut these black people off from all knowledge of their own kind, and cut them off from any knowledge of their own language, religion, and past culture, until the black man in America was the earth's only race of people who had absolutely no knowledge of his true identity.–The Autobiography of Malcolm X

We, like others, need to define ourselves, to place our lives in a long-term linear intergenerational context. We, like others, need to celebrate ourselves by seeing ourselves celebrated. We, like others, need to stare at objects that can help us discover reflections of ourselves in an idealized past. That's really what it's all about, isn't it? Remembering. The human's innate need to remember one's self before one's own time.

What then was I doing visiting George Washington's Mount Vernon many years ago with Hazel? Confused? Confessedly. How can any American who isn't white not be?

If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

The written word is the only anchor we have in life. How extraordinary would it be if we had even three or four paragraphs written honestly about their lives by our ancestors?

It is the little platoons, rather than the great society, which command attention in this new version of the national past; the spirit of place rather than that of the common law or the institutions of representative government.

Latinos are here to stay. As citizen Raquel, I'm proud to be Latina.

My father was Bolivian, which makes me half-Bolivian. It's where I got some of my exotic features and certainly my skin tone.

My music had roots which I'd dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

The evolution of animal behavior does constitute a learning process, but it is learning by the species, not by the individual, and the fruits of this learning process are encoded in DNA.

Americans in the 1770s were sharply divided according to religion, national origin, location, and even language. Scots Irish Presbyterians in North Carolina, English American Anglicans in Virginia, Dutch and German Mennonites in Pennsylvania, Scottish Highlander Catholics in New York, native-born Congregationalists in Massachusetts—each group had its own culture, its own beliefs, its own set of interests.

Consequently, no matter how they try, immigrants cannot prevent their children from becoming cultural products of the adopted country. Through their efforts at preservation, they can only accentuate the gap between the two cultures and prevent harmonization.

The German word for tatting is Schiffchenarbeit meaning 'the work of the little boat

I'm always making Butcher Holler sound like the most backward part of the United States-and I think maybe it is.

My full name is Ross Fleming Butler; it's very British-Irish.

I have no butt, none of the men in my family do.

Although I'm living in California, I'm very proud to be British.

I'm really taken with 'Calling Me Home' by Alice Gerrard.

Well, my parents live in Cambridge, Maryland.

Remember where you came from.

I try to represent Africa and Cameroon as well as I can.

I've always said that even before Cameroon, I belong to Africa.

I'm from Cameroon, Central Africa.

Canada's the best country in the world.