Heritage Quotes

“Respect cannot be inherited, respect is the result of right actions.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“We're a violent people, Cal. Does it seem strange to you that I include myself? Maybe it's true, that we are all descendants of the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers, and brawlers. But also the brave, and independent, and generous. If our ancestors hadn't been that, they would've stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“He looked on in silence at the proof of what Israelis already know, that their history is contrived from the bones and traditions of Palestinians. The Europeans who came knew neither hummus nor falafel but later proclaimed them authentic Jewish cuisine." They claimed the villas of Qatamon as "old Jewish homes. They had no old photographs or ancient drawings of their ancestry living on the land, loving it, and planting it. They arrived from foreign nations and uncovered coins in Palestines earth from the Canaanites, the Romans, the ottomans, then sold them as their own "ancient Jewish artifacts." They came to Jaffa and found oranges the size of watermelons and said, "Behold! The Jews are known for their oranges." But those oranges were the culmination of centuries of Palestinian farmers perfecting the art of citrus growing.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“I realized that my mother had not taught us the tribal language because she knew her children would not be strong enough to carry the responsibility of being the last fluent speakers. She protected us from that spiritual burden. She protected us from that loneliness.”
― Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“A written constitution is needed to protect values AGAINST prevailing wisdom.”
― Antonin Scalia, Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice

“It is myopic to base sweeping change on the narrow experience of a few years.”
― Antonin Scalia, Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice

“The happiest lot on earth is to be born a Scotchman. You must pay for it in many ways, as for all other advantages on earth. You have to learn the paraphrases and the shorter catechism; you generally take to drink; your youth is a time of louder war against society, of more outcry and tears and turmoil, than if you had been born, for instance, in England. But somehow life is warmer and closer; the hearth burns more redly; the lights of home shine softer on the rainy street; the very names, endeared in verse and music, cling nearer round our hearts.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Silverado Squatters

“Children need fairy tales, but it is just as essential that they have parents who tell them about their own lives, so that they can establish a relationship to the past.”
― Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World

“There should be an honored place in history for statesmen whose ideas turned out to be right.”
― Walter Isaacson, American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

“Many races as well as cultural influences of men of all kinds have mixed into any man. To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory.”
― Richard Feynman

“Bless all the women of this world who nurture our heritage while too many man rush off to kill for ideals that might now be deeply and personally held, but will often be viewed as repugnant by later generations.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History

“If the rowan's roots are shallow, it bears no crown.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“Preserve the spirit of a ‘lost’ age, when time moved slower.”
― Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling: Fennel's Journal No. 6

“John Brown, raised by disciplinarians, became one himself.”
― Tony Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War

“Don't you sense the enormity of your mistake – you invade a country without understanding its music. – Norman Mailer”
― Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World

“Abraham Lincoln quoted the Scriptures in an 1858 speech to the Illinois Republican Convention. He said, “ A house divided against itself cannot stand.” That, I fear, is where diversity leads. If by that term we refer to love and tolerance for peoples who are different from one another, it has great validity for us. But if by diversity we mean that all of us have been given reason to resent one another. Having no common values, heritage, commitment, or hope, then we are a nation in serious trouble.”
― James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future

“Nada o muy poco sé de mis mayores
portugueses, los Borges: vaga gente
que prosigue en mi carne, oscuramente,
sus hábitos, rigores y temores.

Tenues como si nunca hubieran sido
y ajenos a los trámites del arte,
indescifrablemente forman parte
del tiempo, de la tierra y del olvido.

Mejor así. Cumplida la faena,
son Portugal, son la famosa gente
que forzó las murallas del Oriente

y se dio al mar y al otro mar de arena.
Son el rey que en el místico desierto
se perdió y el que jura que no ha muerto.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“It seems like the best escape games come from Japan for some reason. It makes me proud.”
― Denis Markell, Click Here to Start

“Blood memory is described as our ancestral (genetic) connection to our language, songs, spirituality, and teachings. It is the good feeling that we experience when we are near these things.”
― Saginaw Chippewa

“Our children are an integral component of our stories as we are of theirs and, therefore, each child acts as the knighted messengers to carry their forebears’ stories into the future. To deprive our children of the narrative cells regarding the formation of the ozone layer that rims the atmosphere of our ancestors’ saga and parental determination of selfhood is to deny them of the sacred right to claim the sanctity of their heritage. Accordingly, all wrinkled brow natives are chargeable with the sacrosanct obligation of telling their kith and kin the memorable story of the scenic days they spent as children of nature splashing about in their naked innocence in the brook of infinite time and space. We must scrupulous document our family’s history as well as scrawl out our personal story.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A traditionalist’s values are gleaned from all that is good in the past.”
― Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling: Fennel's Journal No. 6

“You gotta look backwards to go forwards.”
― Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling: Fennel's Journal No. 6

“Je suppose que nous portons tous en nous le destin de nos ancêtres.”
― Nadia Hashimi, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

“Gen. de Gaulle is only concerned about history, and no jury can dictate the judgment of history." Georges Pompidou”
― Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World

“I like uncovering the cultural prejudices I didn't even know.”
― A.J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All

“Knowledge is not a heritage to be passed on so much as it is something to be created and continually increased”
― Peter Beyer, Religions in Global Society

“It was truer to my father to let the songs he'd sung die with him, little by little, averse at a time. How could these art-mongers constantly ignore the mortality of beauty, a pleonasm if ever I'd heard one?”
― Dimitri Verhulst, De helaasheid der dingen

“Non sarà facile per te vivere là fuori, sei lontano da quel mondo da troppo tempo.” Ripensò alle parole che suo nonno gli aveva detto il giorno in cui aveva deciso di lasciare la riserva e non poté far altro che darsi dello stupido per non averle ascoltate. “Qui a pochi importa che il tuo sangue sia mischiato a quello dei wasi’chu, ma laggiù nelle loro città non incapperai che nel disprezzo e non potrai far nulla per nascondere ciò che sei, perché da dove vieni sta scritto sulla tua faccia.”
― Patrizia Ines Roggero, Paradise Valley: La trilogia

“Those with traditional sense will follow what their heart tells them is right.”
― Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling: Fennel's Journal No. 6

“The past informs the present.”
― Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling: Fennel's Journal No. 6