My father is 100% Japanese and came to the United States when he was only 18 years old. My grandmother still resides in Japan, which has allowed me to travel to the roots of my ancestors with my father.
The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity.
The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who… looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space… on the infinite highway of the air.
To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.
In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.
We know that genes shape human cultures and human societies: The DNA we inherited from our ancestors makes certain foods taste better, affects the way we care for children, influences what colors we find vibrant, and contributes to our love of socializing, among other examples.
If you remember your ancestors, they can cross over and be with you again.
Our ancestors always thought of the worst thing that could happen, and that’s why we’re alive.
I brought a Border Collie back home to Vancouver from Wales – where some of my ancestors are from – and needed to challenge him in other ways than just being my pet. So I investigated sheep herding and took a few lessons, and decided I was probably learning more than my dog!
Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors.
I have a real interest in working with younger Native artists. I think it’s a very important way for Native people to communicate the realities of our culture and remember our ancestors.
My ancestors had to keep their customs secret for fear of death or persecution, so it’s common to be secretive and discreet about Regla de Ocha. But it’s my family’s spirituality, so I don’t want to keep it secret.
But it really wasn’t until three to four years later, when we had an opportunity in the lab to make very detailed observations, and comparisons with other fossil discoveries, that we realized she was a new species of human ancestor.
None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married.
I think these people have betrayed or have forgotten their ancestors.
I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.
I am a Malayali. My ancestors are from Tamil Nadu, but they settled in Irinjalakuda.
Through trial-and-error and observable outcomes, our ancestors narrowed the field of edible mushroom candidates to just a few with remarkable, health-supporting properties.
Crafts make us feel rooted, give us a sense of belonging and connect us with our history. Our ancestors used to create these crafts out of necessity, and now we do them for fun, to make money and to express ourselves.
Our ancestors relied upon their advanced brains to survive during times of food shortage, and fortunately, the human brain is able to utilize body fat as an extremely efficient fuel to sustain function when glucose-providing food is unavailable.
One of the core ideas of the Bible is that meaning can be found in history. The sheer act of telling and retelling stories helps us to understand God’s role in the world as well as our own position in a long line of ancestors who have wrestled with similar issues to the ones we wrestle with every day.
We must wake up to the insane reality of our time. We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors condemned.
I love working with genre. And to me, the Victorian novel is the flourishing ancestor I’m always trying to access when I write.
Jimmy Baldwin was not only a writer, an international literary figure: he was a man, spirit, voice – old and black and terrible as that first ancestor.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
White Americans, stop apologizing; we live in the greatest country in the history of mankind, and it’s there because of our ancestors – those who came to this country and did their very best. And every generation has gotten better at what we’re good at.
Someone accompanies every soul from the other side when it enters this place. Usually it is an ancestor with whom that child shares traits and gifts.
Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind.
We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We’re in a relay race, relying on the financial and human capital of our parents and grandparents. Blacks were shackled for the early part of that relay race, and although many of the fetters have come off, whites have developed a huge lead.
To live in Portsmouth without possessing a family portrait done by Copley is like living in Boston without having an ancestor in the old Granary Burying-Ground. You can exist, but you cannot be said to flourish.
We talk different languages, eat different foods, but all humanity has one ancestor, which started from one person, which started from one god.
My ancestors include Monahwee, who was one of the leaders in the Red Stick War, which was the largest Indian uprising in history, and Osceola, who refused to sign a treaty with the United States.
I always cherish my ancestors, my grandpa, great-grandpa, what they did for us, especially my dad who moved from Bosnia. He started a new life in Slovenia so basically I grew up there.
Almost certainly, my ancestors had travelled by sea from Sweden to England in search of prosperity, and the evidence suggests they left Sweden around the ninth or 10th centuries.
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.
I’m one hundred percent Irish, and I’m very proud that I’m Irish American, though I don’t know exactly where my ancestors came from. I just know County Cork.
The Day of the Dead is a joyful celebration when you can connect with and remember your ancestors.
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
We feel closer to the drawings on the walls of Chauvet than the painting of, say, an Egyptian mural. These artists are not remote ancestors; they are brothers. They saw like us; they drew like us. We wear essentially the same clothes against the cold.
My own personal melting pot has no room for Hendrix or heavy metal, filled as it is with European ancestors such as Debussy, Sibelius, Bartok, Lutoslawski, and Ligeti.
I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he’s no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.
I think often about my ancestors who struggled for freedom, and as I think of those giants and their broad shoulders, I also think about Joe Biden, who says, ‘If you are not voting for me, you ain’t black.’
I have written about the women around me. My ancestors, my relatives, lovers. It was a way of trying to make it all make sense.
Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.
To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of the ancestors, is to build our identities.
In many ways, each of us is the sum total of what our ancestors were. The virtues they had may be our virtues, their strengths our strengths, and, in a way, their challenges could be our challenges.
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
I love to read because I know that for a long time ancestors weren’t allowed to. I love to write. Because for a long time my people weren’t ‘allowed’ to. So I’m going to write my books, my apps and tell my stories.
My ancestors came from Co Roscommon, transported to Van Diemen’s Land for stealing food.
The first American ancestor of our name was a younger son of these old Devonshire people, and came to the Virginia colony in the reign of Charles the First.
If we want to set and enforce a limit on immigration, we have to be willing to say no to would-be immigrants who look a lot like our own ancestors, not because there’s anything wrong with them, but simply because admitting them would exceed our legal limit.
It was through cooking food and sharing it with each other that our ancestors learned how to become social animals.
I’m the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could’ve been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves.
