Quotes About Origins

In the 1970s, family history wasn't yet thought of a serious field for study. I was terrified of being laughed at by other historians. I called my book 'The Social Origins of Private Life.' It should have been 'As Pompous as You Want to Be.' Every sentence was academic jargon, and if I said X, I qualified it with Y.

The evolutionary explanation for origins, although impossible either to prove or to test scientifically, is nevertheless defended by its proponents on the basis that it is the only explanation which is naturalistic, not involving the 'supernatural' element of a divine Creator.

I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament and fluency in Biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also happens to be Muslim.

As prominent Baptist historian Walter "Buddy" Shurden has pointed out, it wasn't until the last two decades of the twentieth century that white Baptist historians directly faced up to the proslavery, white supremacist origins of their denomination.

it wasn't until the last two decades of the twentieth century that white Baptist historians directly faced up to the proslavery, white supremacist origins of their denomination. Robert Baker, a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary through the first half of the twentieth century, acknowledged that "the involvement of the South in the 'peculiar institution

Where did these things come from? What are they made of and which one was made with a technology that inflicts minimal damage on the earth? Can I buy pens with the same mentality with which a person digs wild leeks?

In other words our own earliest sense of self-identity is associated with learning the language of our cultural womb.

Were you BORN inhuman or did you grow so by degrees?! MS, MD, PHD?

Though men in the mass forget the origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful discomfort. The magic that gleams an instant between Argos and Odysseus is both the recognition of diversity and the need for affection across the illusions of form. It is nature's cry to homeless, far-wandering, insatiable man: Do not forget your brethren, nor the green wood from which you sprang. To do so is to invite disaster.

Adoption. A realized fantasy of your parents not really being your parents. Your genes could thrust one arm in the air and pump up and down. Yes! You were not actually related to Them!

I was raised up where folks looked to the hills, only up where we came from you hadn't chance to look much higher, we were that near the top of the ridge.

Well let me tell you, something Caveman. You are here on the account of one person. If it wasn't for that person, you wouldn't be here digging holes in the hot sun. You know who that person is? said Mr. Pendanski. My no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.

Well, let me tell you something, Caveman. You are here on account of one person. If it wasn't for that person, you wouldn't be here digging holes in the hot sun. You know who that person is?" "My no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather.

necessity being the mother of invention

The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.

all of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government. . .

All the while we know that the true beginnings of an event lie half hidden in earlier movements, so that the visible starting point is in fact a culmination of forces which pre-dated its appearance.

lady," a word she had found out came from the Anglo-Saxon "lafdig," meaning "she who makes the bread.

We know the force of gravity, but not its origins; and to explain why we become attached to our birthplaces we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.

The self was both its origins and its journey.

I am comparing gravity with belonging... Both phenomena observably exist... but neither is understood...We know the force of gravity but not its origins; and to explain how we become attached to our birth places we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places. -- from Home and Shame

and do not speak to me, please, of African Eve or LUCA, the three-and-a-half-billion-year-old blob of goo that was our Last Universal Common Ancestor. I am aware of the family tree of the human race and of pre-Homo sap life on earth and to insist upon those genealogies now would be wilfully to miss my point.

120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.

We are not self-caused little gods.