Quotes About Ancestry

One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description)

Shadow-making happens in families and makes us who we are. It leads to shadow-work, which makes us who we can become.

A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.

I grew up in Skaneateles, a small town in New York's Finger Lakes region, where parts of my family have lived for five generations. I can walk the streets there and point out my father's childhood home, the houses my grandfather built, the farm where my great-great-uncle worked after he emigrated from England in the 1880s.

I met a Shanghai photographer who finds these old streets and matches the French names to what they are today. I was able to find my grandfather's block, and just walking the same streets and finding his house was deeply moving. I finally felt connected to China.

Being African American and Jewish, I have plenty of ancestors and family members that I can look to for strength and, more importantly, for a grateful outlook on life.

It's always good to go home. It's strengthening to see your past and know you have someplace to go where you're part of a people.

My father, who is deeply spiritual and religious, always stressed that my siblings and I remain true to our Indian roots.

Four legs on a chair, to me, represent a strong foundation and always knowing where I come from.

The great lesson my mother and father gave me was almost invisible. It was a strong sense of being rooted.

Kunta Kinte's strength derives from the knowledge of where he comes from, but it struck me that I don't know where I come from. I understand that my last name is Kirby, that I was born in London, third-generation Jamaican, and at some point along the line, that name was changed. I didn't know my history past my grandparents.

There are still Negro elites. Many of them are obviously much richer, and perhaps a little more integrated into what remains a white power structure. But those old rituals from the social clubs, to the broadly segregated white and black schools, to an obsessive interest in ancestry, all of that does still exist. Look: we are a class-bound society.

For me, what I try to heal is the major thing that I think all of us go through, where we came from. From our family of origin.

The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.

While we are originally from Mangalore, my grandfather had migrated to Burma from where he returned to join the Indian National Army and settled in Mumbai, where I was born and brought up.

My last name is originally Irish. I'm not exactly sure whereabouts it's from, but I've got family branches that were traced back there.

When we look for the origins of all humanity today, let's not just look at Europe, because I think Africa was the cradle, the crucible that created us as Homo sapiens.

My maternal grandmother, a.k.a. Nanny, wasn't much of a cook. As a kid I remember her making only a handful of things, mostly dishes with Ashkenazi Jewish origins like kasha and bowties (which, for the record, only my dad liked).

'I am not adopted; I have mysterious origins.' I have said that sentence many times in the course of my life as an adopted person.

I was not born in Telangana but my origins are in Telangana. My parents Varalaxmi and Srinivas Prasad hailed from Ramannagudem.

My family is from New Orleans. My grandma is French. Everybody else is from Mississippi - Creole people.

So my father grew up in an orphanage in Boston. He was then adopted by an elderly childless couple from Maine, who gave him the name of Mitchell. He moved to Maine, and there he met my mother and was married.

Remember who you are and where you come from; otherwise, you don't know where you are going.

A friend of ours has a hobby doing genealogy, and we found out that we were cousins in the ninth degree, that we had a common ancestor on the Mayflower.