#ancestors

I can see why many Southerners, black ones in particular, don't like the implication that Southernness and the Confederate heritage are one and the same, because they're not. On the other hand, there are people who want to extirpate that completely and want folks to spit on the graves of their ancestors. ↗

— John Shelton Reed

#because #black #completely #confederate #folks

My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave. ↗

— Paul Robeson

#baked #born #bread #crossed #delaware

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone. ↗

— John Ciardi

#ancestors #gone #left #money #over

Any living cell carries with it the experience of a billion years of experimentation by its ancestors. ↗

— Max Delbruck

#any #billion #carries #cell #experience

Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names. At some point the search becomes futile – there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago. All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks. What will it be? A photograph? A will? A fragment of a letter? The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for. ↗

— Henry Wiencek

#life #search #time #family

To me, the word wisdom means ancient knowledge. It’s the kind of knowledge you not only see but feel when you look into the eyes of an elephant or stop for a moment to marvel at the deep wrinkles on its skin, both of which I believe contain the truths learned from each intentional step their feet and those of their ancestors have placed upon the earth. ↗

— Molly Friedenfeld

#earth #elephant #eyes #feet #inspiration

With this realization, came a growing need for men and women willing to take up arms in an effort to protect our American way of life and the freedoms so many of our ancestors died to entrench. ↗

— Jim Walsh

#american way #ancestors #arms #came #died

For an economy built to last we must invest in what will fuel us for generations to come. 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 #built #come

You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#again #ancestors #ancestry #black #forced

It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. ↗

— Plutarch

#belongs #desirable #glory #indeed #our