Ancestry Quotes

The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.

My forefathers didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.

Though you be sprung in direct line from Hercules, if you show a lowborn meanness, that long succession of ancestors whom you disgrace are so many witnesses against you; and this grand display of their tarnished glory but serves to make your ignominy more evident.

There is no more fascinating subject in which a person may become occupied than an examination into the history of his ancestry.

Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage.

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.

All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?

The theater, when it is potent enough to deserve its ancestry, is always dangerous; that is why it is instinctively feared by people who do not want change, but only preservation of the status quo.

Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

A Nation... is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry, and a common dislike of their neighbors

There are many kinds of conceit, but the chief one is to let people know what a very ancient and gifted family one descends from.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.

The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

Nobility of birth is like a cipher; it has no power in itself, like wealth or talent; but, it tells with all the power of a cipher when added to either of the other two.

It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry.

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.

Born in a cellar, and living in a garret.

Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own.

Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea

Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.