Quotes About Origins

Samhain had its origins, like many modern holidays or celebrations, in pagan times. As the sidhe-seers had been inclined to erect churches and abbeys on their sacred sites, the Vatican had been wont to "Christianize" ancient, pagan celebrations in an if-you-can't-beat-them-and-don't-wantto- join-them-rename-it-and-pretend-it-was-yours-all-along campaign.

This leads up to our thesis which still remains to be proven: that the origins of the cataclysm lay in the utopian endeavor of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market system.

Then they were moving again. Frank told her it was because of Benni, the nursemaid who looked after them. Benni was half Chinese, that golden skin. Her mother was ordinary Australian, was how Benni put it. That

The English word loo for toilet may come from 1) lieu à l'anglaise, the French term for toilet, or 2) Gardez l'eau! (Watch out for the water!), called to alert passersby that chamber pots were being emptied from upper-story windows into the street.

Our own conceptions of creation are far more scientific in outlook, and we expect creation stories merely to disclose the rudiments of nature's origins. Not so the ancients. They told creation stories with the primary purpose of providing a cosmic foundation for the meaning and purpose of human life.

At some point close to the year 1800, somebody created the world's first cocktail.

Drinks included in the French-Italian family all contain vermouths, either sweet, dry, or both, or sometimes brand-named products, such as Lillet, an aperitif wine that's closely related to vermouth. The name of this family of drinks is derived from the fact that people used to call sweet vermouth "Italian" and dry vermouth "French," referring to their countries of origin (regardless of where specific bottlings were actually produced).

Every carbon atom in every living thing on the planet was produced in the heart of a dying star.

Thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams exist on Earth because of electrical activity inside a 1.5-kilogram blob of stuff, which hasn't changed much since the earliest modern humans began the long journey out of Africa

about our origins, our destiny, and our place in the universe. We have no right to expect answers; we have no right to even ask. But ask and wonder we do. Human Universe is first and foremost a love letter to humanity; a celebration of our outrageous fortune

Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid. Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed. Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep. No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way. They all end the same, too.

As the late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould once memorably remarked, we humans are all descendants from the same African twig.

Let us hope it is not true," cried one horrified lady upon hearing that humans were descended from apes, "but if it is, let us pray it will not become generally known.

My father, Vernon, used to tell me I would never have been born if he hadn't been curious about what was underneath my mother's pink poodle skirt.

One of the problems with the kill-or-capture metric is that it has often been to the exclusion of having a deeper, richer understanding of the movement, its origins, and our adversaries' mindset. The nuances are absolutely critical. Our adversaries are wedded to the ideology that informs and fuels their struggle, and, by not paying attention, we risk not knowing our enemy.

hailing from Sorrento, Italy, via Brooklyn via Ellis Island.

The Internet of Things is supposed to be invisible to all but its corporate and military masters. But the Internet itself is hugely obvious and famous—because, even though the Internet is also corporate and military in its origins, for about a decade the Internet was all anybody talked about.

Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, without including their ostensible authors.

Conquest is the needle which stitched together virtually all of the "great nations" which we know today—allowing such multitribal hodgepodges as Germans, Russians, Arabs, Japanese, English, and French to convince themselves that they have always been ein Volk—one folk with a unique bloodline and history.

Authentic brands don't emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does...

The Christian Church has tended to overlook its Judaic origins, but the fact is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of Palestine when he went about his Father's business, announcing the acceptable year of the Lord.

While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad, and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.

For all his Caribbean clothes and his Madison Avenue manners, even with his surfside apartment and his Alfa Romeo roadster, there was so much Kansas in Sanderson that it was embarrassing to see him deny it.

I've heard it argued that long ago pain begat consciousness. To avoid serious damage a simple