Quotes About Origins

People need foundation myths.

Finding a homeland is not the same as dwelling in the place where our ancestors once used to live."   —KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI

It is not easy to speak of people and land in simple terms beginnings with a beginning and ending with an end.

it was in a way the world at the very beginning – the elements alone, and starlight.

Now we think of the middle class as people who are neither rich nor poor, but originally they were a distinct group. In a feudal society, there are just two classes: a warrior aristocracy, and the serfs who work their estates. The middle class were a new, third group who lived in towns and supported themselves by manufacturing and trade.

if you're not in touch with your roots, you feel as if you've lost touch with the world

There is no art which has not had its beginnings in things full of errors. Nothing is at the same time both new and perfect.

The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European.

All art comes from other art, and all immigrants come from other places.

I believe that one's basic financial attitudes are - like a tendency toward fat knees - probably formed in utero, or, at the very latest, in cribbo.

You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora? Dorothy asked. He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him. Charles isn't a Greek name. It's Charalambides, I explained. When the old man came over, the mugg that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long...too much trouble to write... and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in.

The best way to learn Japanese is to be born as a Japanese baby, in Japan, raised by a Japanese family.

Everyone's cavemen ancestors were assholes.

As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do

As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment...

Big History is the story of how you and I came to be.

No one seems to realise that the aristocracy is God's special gift to mankind. The burghers treat us no better than commoners. Considering our divine origins, such disrespect is the worst form of impiety. I'm sure your Grace agrees.

Prior to Y.P.W.c.'s Freedom of Speculation Act, credible sociohistorical data on the origins and evolution of Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents from obscure, adolescent, nihilistic Root Cult to one of the most feared cells in the annals of Canadian extremism was regrettably patchy and dependent on the hearsay of sources whose scholarly veracity was of an integrity somewhat less than unimpeachable.

Madame Psychosis' name was in reality Lucille Duquette, and the Daddy's name either Earl or Al Duquette of extreme southeast KY, way down near TN and VA.

Siccome ti sono amico, ti risparmio le vaccate. Vuoi sapere da dove vengono i mangiabestie. Stammi a sentire, allora. I mangiabestie non si trovano. Si creano.

A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.

What's past is prologue.