Famous Quotes & Sayings

I realize many of my ancestors fought so I could have the opportunities I have today, and I appreciate them for the sacrifices they made for us.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves.

David Brin

Is this a horrible future? Or actually a return to what we've always had in the past? Think of old villages. Everybody knew everything about everybody else. Strangers were intimidating and worrisome. This will be like the village our ancestors grew up in, only with 7 billion people.

Kim Edwards

I find my husband's family history fascinating, as they can trace the family lineage back to ancestors who fought, and died, in the first battle of the Revolution, as well as to many other interesting people.

As he was doing it, he was saying maybe these are some of my ancestors and my people here. It really was something for him.

Nick Clooney

Our ancestors were very smart people. I have a sinking feeling they were much more educated than we, and that they got smarter much younger than we.

John Burnside

Our ancestors went to the woods to find fuel; they set snares there for birds and gathered nuts and fungi.

Our ancestors taught them how to sow maize, later how to sow the seeds of this country. And now they treat us like this . . . treat us like criminals. Our people just come here to work.

Ruth Reichl

It was through cooking food and sharing it with each other that our ancestors learned how to become social animals.

Jan C. Ting

All Americans are either immigrants or descendants of ancestors who came from somewhere else, including Native Americans. We should all respect and admire immigrants.

Robert Green Ingersoll

It has been said that a man of genius should select his ancestors with great care - and yet there does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think. The children of the great are often small.

Alice Walker

It is because I recognize the brutality with which my own multi-branched ancestors have been treated that I can identify the despicable, lawless, cruel, and sadistic behavior that has characterized Israel's attempts to erase a people, the Palestinians, from their own land.

Joy Harjo

My ancestors include Monahwee, who was one of the leaders in the Red Stick War, which was the largest Indian uprising in history, and Osceola, who refused to sign a treaty with the United States.

Will Rogers

My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat.

Will Rogers

My ancestors didn't come over in the Mayflower -- they met the boat.

Richard Flanagan

My ancestors came from Co Roscommon, transported to Van Diemen's Land for stealing food.

From our ancestors come our names from our virtues our honor.

Henry Louis Gates

But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.

Tom Snyder

Misers are no fun to live with but they make great ancestors

My generation, our generation, isn't so much concerned with where you're from. We don't have as much of a connection, a feel for the politics of our ancestors ... we are losing the idea of separate identities between the North and South.

Jim Murphy

I think my ancestors had to be enormously strong emotionally and very courageous.

Our people ask for nothing more than the recognition of citizenship, nothing more than the right to live on the land where their ancestors were born. Nothing more than their identity cards.

Greg Iles

My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a decade; I dug ditches and loaded trucks with black men who taught me more than any book ever could; and I graduated from Ole Miss. Anyone who survived that is a de facto expert on the South.

Tristram Stuart

Good food for free has been the holy grail of foragers since our ancestors first climbed down from the trees.

We're lucky our ancestors came here. It makes you realize the sacrifices they experienced.

Cory Booker

This is our history - from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most historic bridges - our American ancestors prioritized growth and investment in our nation's infrastructure.

Luanne Rice

My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'

Luanne Rice

I went to Cork, Ireland, and stood on the dock some of my ancestors had left from. I felt their ghosts gather round me, and I cried to imagine what it must have felt like - leaving that beautiful land and those beloved people, knowing it was forever.

Luanne Rice

I traveled to Ireland to research 'Sandcastles,' to visit the coastline where my ancestors looked toward America, the tiny town they once loved so much, and the docks from which they sailed toward their dreams of building a better life for their family. The answers I found on that journey are woven through the novel.

While we know a lot about how teeth and facial structures changed over time, it was thought that once our ancestors became bipedal, there were few, if any, changes in the ankle associated with walking on two legs. Now we know there were slightly different ways to be bipedal.

Mark Pagel

You and I probably wouldn't be here if our ancestors hadn't been greedy savages.

Paul Stamets

Through trial-and-error and observable outcomes, our ancestors narrowed the field of edible mushroom candidates to just a few with remarkable, health-supporting properties.