#ancestors

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#america #ancestors #been #born #descendants

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

The book begins and ends with the visits to give the impression of a tunnel into their ancestors and family history. I believe in going backwards into the past - I felt I was digging a tunnel back to the past. ↗

— Anita Desai

#back #backwards #begins #believe #book

There is no escape - we pay for the violence of our ancestors. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#escape #our #pay #violence

It is surprising to me that one of the great crimes of history has gone unnoticed; the abduction of god by religions. This slight-of-hand has been the cause of countless blood-shed and has been found at the root of innumerable acts of evil. The argument continues today, as to which religion the true god belongs, when what would be most healing and empowering is to free god from the shackles of religious limitation and judgment. It is by emancipating god from the ignorance of our ancestors that we become empowered to explore and express our own relationship with what god may or may not be. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#empowered #god #history #relationship #religion

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#backward #confined #forward #generally #innovation

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. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#binary #black #creates #enormous #example

There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.' ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#beyond #books #eat #elephant #especially

I'm just confused as to where we lost that in America because it is everyone's God-given right to think the way they think and that's fine. That's why our ancestors came here to America, to believe what they want, pray how they want and follow a religion with whoever they want. ↗

— Angie Harmon

#ancestors #because #believe #came #confused

There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations. ↗

— Claude Vorilhon

#ancestors #call #glorious #history #mistakes