Quotes About Heritage

Will you, my countrymen, the descendants of these men, warmed by their blood, inheriting their language, and having the principles for which they struggled confided to your care, allow them to be violated in your hands?

Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature.

Some might consider me an unlikely advocate for gun rights because I sustained terrible injuries in a violent shooting. But I'm a patriot, and I believe the right to bear arms is a definitive part of our American heritage.

My grandma has a picture of Louis Farrakhan playing violin in her house.

My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths - that's why I am so open.

Born Virginia Marshall but nicknamed Gig, my mother was a home economics teacher who had come all the way across the whole state of Virginia, from her home on the Eastern Shore to our little Appalachian coal town to marry my daddy, Ernest Smith, whose family had lived in these mountains for generations.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families - second families, perhaps I should say.

The story of our Commonwealth cannot be told without the history and experiences of Virginia's Native tribes.

Virginia is a good start for Italy.

I'm from Middlesboro, Ky., a little town on the Tennessee and Virginia border.

The South Downs of England reminded me a bit of my Old Virginia homeland.

In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.

I write about Texas, New York, California and Virginia, and they're all important places in my repertoire.

When you say you're from Virginia, when you travel outside of this state and somebody asks where you're from, you say with pride, 'I am from Virginia. I'm very, very proud of it.' You're very, very proud of it. And why is it? It's because of our history, folks. It's because of our history.

My mom's mother was from Virginia, but I don't feel much of a tie. I'm very much anti-South for many, many reasons. Whenever I go down there, people are always looking at me funny, you know.

It's the state of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. That is our heritage. It is what makes us Virginia.

Growing up in Virginia, I was surrounded by two different cultures.

We have good history in Virginia... and we have history that's not good and I don't think we can shy away from any of it. We must tell it all, we must put it in perspective.

OUR history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us.

You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know?

Almost any decent cook will make food by eye and taste. Virtually all of my family cooked that way.

There's virtually nothing made up in 'The Immigrant.' So much of the film came from somewhere in my family's past. All the details are from my own family.

The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people.

By virtue of being a half Punjabi and half Sikh, tandoori chicken was my staple diet.