Quotes About Heritage

the entire area was once apple orchards – all down to Henry the Eighth and his desire for an abundant supply of fresh fruit in days of yore.

I'm in favor or tradition. I'm respectful of and a lover of the tradition. There's no deconstruction without the memory of the tradition.

this phrase was meaningless, for no matter where the Jew wandered, if he took with him the Talmud he was

James A. Michener

That's how it gonna be all your life," Julia Cater told her son, and she was preaching old black wisdom, for through the generations that was how black women enabled their sons to survive so that they could grow into black men. Hiram

Any spot for which a man's forebears have bled and died will forever be his homeland.

The count says we're Austrians now. But the countess tells me on the sly: 'You're Polish and always will be.' I asked her if she was Polish too, and she said: 'Forever.' " Tytus led his son to a window, and as if to lend emphasis to what he was about to say, pointed toward the river: "As long as the Vistula flows, it waters the soul of Poland.

James A. Michener

James A. Michener

Man is primarily a spiritual being, and as such, is of the nature and substance of the Eternal Spirit, the Unchangeable Reality, which men call God. Goodness, not sin, is his rightful condition; perfection, not imperfection, is his heritage, and this a man may enter into and realize now if he will grant the condition, which is the denial or abandonment of self, that is, of his feverish desires, his proud will, his egotism and self-seeking — all that which St. Paul calls the natural man.

Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.

We cannot escape our origins, however hard we try, those origins which contain the key -could we but find it- to all we later become

If you know from whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations on where you can go.

The American Negro is a unique creation; he has no counterpart anywhere, and no predecessors.

If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.

Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him--he may be forced to--but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.

The paradox, and a fearful paradox it is, is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere on any continent as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. To accept one's past--one's history--is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

To accept one's past—one's history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. How can the American Negro's past be used? The unprecedented price demanded—and at this embattled hour of the world's history—is the transcendence of the realities of color, of nations, and of altars.

It is a fact that every American Negro bears a name that originally belonged to the white man whose chattel he was. I am called Baldwin because I was either sold by my African tribe or kidnapped out of it into the hands of a white Christian named Baldwin, who forced me to kneel at the foot of the cross. I am, then, both visibly and legally the descendant of slaves in a white, Protestant country, and this is what it means to be an American Negro, this is who he is—

Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.

I realized that the Bible had been written by white men. I knew that, according to many Christians, I was a descendant of Ham, who had been cursed, and that I was therefore predestined to be a slave.