Joyce Carol Oates
Author, Poet
"We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language."
Ancestry quotes
Ancestry
76 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Luther Burbank
Horticulturist
"Heredity is nothing but stored environment."
Edmund Burke
Philosopher, Politician
"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."
Ovid
Poet
"The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses."
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Physician, Poet, Essayist
"Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside ancestry — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Ancestry quotes (page 1 of 4)
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"By ancestry, I was born to rule."
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"It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors."
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"Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite."
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"He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another."
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"Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others."
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"Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal."
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"So what we can answer [as geneticists] is questions about biology, about biological ancestry. But to make any sense of that historically we have to contextualize it - the archaeology, the linguistic pattern, even the climatology."
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"Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride."
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"Pedigree and ancestry and what we ourselves have not achieved, I scarcely recognize as our own."
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"Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own."
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"It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one."
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"Breed is stronger than pasture."
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"Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace."
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"It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry."
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"No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition."
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"Sire, I am my own Rudolph of Hapsburg."
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"I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers."
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"My life shall be free and broad and great, and I will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancestry. I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwise?"
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"In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black."
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"There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months."
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