“History is the essence of innumerable biographies.”
-Thomas Carlyle
“Know from where you come. Before you know who you are and where you are going, you must know from where you come.”
-From Leon Uris in the words of his character Andrei Androfski’s father in Mila 18
“History will be kind to me for I have written it. Winston Churchill”
-Ron Mayes, Sherrod’s Legacy: Reflections of Sherrod Mayes and His Descendants
“History doesn’t move you more than when it’s in the iron of your own blood.”
-J.R. Tompkins
“There is no such thing as an insignificant life, only the insignificance of mind that refuses to grasp the implications.”
-Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant’s Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009:
A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants
“We are all the product of things we’ve never seen and people we never met. In fact, if just one little detail had been changed in their lives, we may not even exist!”
-Melanie Johnston
FROM: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/genealogy
“The preservation and perpetuation of ancestral history, it’s idols, ideals and traditions by compilation and recordation of material data regarding each member of the family in the ancestral line; and to the enkindling and enhancement of a greater love, devotion, pride and loyalty within the family circle making for a happier home life and conducive to a finer citizenship. The beginning of society, it has been said many times, is the family, a natural association of kindred by blood, a group formed of parents and children, and generally regarded as constituting the foundation of the most primitive of human associations in civilized society. The first step in the path of material and moral progress began with the rearing of a family and family cares have been the most powerful agents of civilization.”
-Edgar H. Walker 1932
Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.
-Søren Kierkegaard
Our Fathers in a wondrous age,
Ere yet the Earth was small,
Ensured to us an heritage,
And doubted not at all
That we, the children of their heart,
Which then did beat so high,
In later time should play like part
For our posterity.
-Kipling
Knowledge of ancestry is a birthright
-Author Unknown
The story of family names is of extraordinary fascination, for it is one in which everybody has a proprietary interest.
Witness thy portrait, smoke defiled,
That decked his shelter-place
Life seemed more present, wrote the child,
Beneath thy well-known face.
-Kipling
“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage – to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.”
– Alex Haley, Roots
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten; Either write things worthy of reading, or do things worthy of writing.”
– Benjamin Franklin, May 1738
“I don’t know who my grandfather was, I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”
– Abraham Lincoln
You live as long as you are remembered.
– Russian proverb
“Those who forget their past are destined to repeat it.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
“We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn … betrays its ancestor.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”
-Edmund Burke
FROM: http://genealogy.about.com/od/humor/a/famous_quotes.htm