#ancestor

He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#apes #death #sadness #science #death

Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many … can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference. ↗

— James W Loewen

#death-and-dying #ghosts #lies-my-teacher-told-me #spirits #art

Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me. ↗

— Tad Williams

#funny #funny

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 #dam #growth

As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves. ↗

— Daniel J. Boorstin

#america #ancestors #been #beloved #echo

We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching. ↗

— Paul Tsongas

#ancestors #back #children #continuum #fundamental

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. ↗

— Wilbur Wright

#ancestors #birds #desire #down #fly

The people of western Missouri are, in some respects, very peculiar. We will take Jackson county where I was born for instance. In that section the people seemed to be born fighters, the instinct being inherited from a long line of ancestors. ↗

— Cole Younger

#being #born #county #fighters #i

None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married. ↗

— E. W. Howe

#adam #ancestors #boast #does #eve

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. ↗

— Edmund Burke

#backward #forward #look #never #people