#ancestors

No, writing has not changed me for the better at all; I have merely used up part of my restless, conscienceless youth. What value to me will these discontented pages be? The book, the vow, are worth no more than one is worth oneself. One can never be sure of saving one's soul by writing. One may go writing on and on with a soul already lost. ↗

— Italo Calvino

#our-ancestors #the-non-existent-knight #change

Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#ancestry #build #building-blocks #globe-trotting #inspiration

Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans. ↗

— Daniel J. Levitin

#connection #flexibility #music #people #communication

We're all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us. ↗

— Liam Callanan

#death #ghosts #liam-callanan #the-cloud-atlas #death

My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions. ↗

— Elayne Boosler

#ask #because #directions #even #forty

Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many … can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference. ↗

— James W Loewen

#death-and-dying #ghosts #lies-my-teacher-told-me #spirits #art

Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me. ↗

— Tad Williams

#funny #funny

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. ↗

— Cory Booker

#ancestors #bridges #building #dam #growth

As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves. ↗

— Daniel J. Boorstin

#america #ancestors #been #beloved #echo

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#bacteria #cells #colony #creatures #each