An ancestor is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth). Although our ancestors are not with us now, we choose to keep them with us.
If you’re searching for famous family quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of birth quotes, powerful parents quotes, and top grandma quotes.
Most Famous Ancestors Quotes
Our ancestors who changed the world did so through new ideas which came to them as they acted. – Raymond Charles Barker
We are bound to our ancestors and to those who made us, whether we want to be or not. What matters is what we make of what we are. – Kate Elliott
Our ancestors-built temples for their gods. We build department stores. – David Mitchell
Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn. – Marian Wright Edelman
Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors. – Voltaire
Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to people better than you are. – John Garland Pollard
Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone. – John Ciardi
The family you came from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have. – Ring Lardner
If your descent is from heroic sires, Show in your life a remnant of their fires. – Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux Satires
To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root. – Chinese proverb
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. – Edmund Burke
It is certainly desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. – Plutarch
No man can cause more grief than the one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors. – William Faulkner
I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. – Abraham Lincoln
A man who thinks too much about his ancestors is like a potato-the best part of him is underground. – Henry S. F. Cooper
We are all omnibuses in which our ancestors ride, and every now and then one of them sticks his head out and embarrasses us. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
You have been paid for. Each of you, Black, White, Brown, Yellow, Red—whatever pigment you use to describe yourselves—has been paid for. But for the sacrifices made by some of your ancestors, you would not be here; they have paid for you. So, when you enter a challenging situation, bring them on the stage with you; let their distant voices add timbre and strength to your words. For it is your job to pay for those who are yet to come. – Maya Angelou
We have to live in a way that liberates the ancestors and future generations who are inside of us. Joy, peace, freedom, and harmony are not individual matters. If we do not liberate our ancestors, we will be in bondage all our life, and we will transmit that to our children and grandchildren. Now is the time to do it. To liberate them means to liberate ourselves. This is the teaching of interbeing. As long as the ancestors in us are still suffering, we cannot really be happy. If we take one step mindfully, freely, happily touching the earth, we do it for all previous and future generations. They all arrive with us at the same moment, and all of us find peace at the same time. – Thích Nhất Hạnh
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. – Plutarch
The ancestor of every destructive action, every destructive decision, is a negative thought. – Eknath Easwaran
Christianity doesn’t demand that we worship our ancestors. If we don’t remember our ancestors, then, in all likelihood, we cannot also recall the distant past. – F. Sionil Jose
Our ancestors have invented, we can at least innovate. – Amit Kalantri
We rarely know who our ancestors were. Who can even remember the names of their great-grandparents? They have vanished into the dim and distant past. – Dmitri Volkogonov
Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren’t even mammals. – Robert Anton Wilson
Our ancestors are an ever-widening circle of hope. – Toni Morrison
The ancestors are very much invested in the children, because the children are the ones who are going to continue the world that the ancestors made. – Robert Bly
The point is that for our ancestors, the universe was a picture; for modern physics it is a story. – C.S. Lewis
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history. It is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations. – Claude Vorilhon
Our ancestors, possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them. – Thomas Jefferson
Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents. – Alan Dundes
When we know about our ancestors, when we sense them as living and as supporting us, then we feel connected to the genetic life-stream, and we draw strength and nourishment from this. – Philip Carr-Gomm
We were not the victims of ancestor worship. We had the benefits of a fresh start. – Matthew D. Miller
None of us can boast about the morality of our ancestors. The record does not show that Adam and Eve were ever married. – Edgar Watson Howe
Our ancestors lived out of doors. They were as familiar with the night sky as most of us are with our favorite television programs. – Carl Sagan
The ancestor of every action is a thought. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our ancestors have travelled the iron age; the golden is before us. – Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten. – Samuel Johnson
Though we have rightly applauded our ancestors for their spiritual achievements, those of us who prevail today will have done no small thing. – Neal A. Maxwell
Seeds carry life from generation to generation without end. Through the seeds speak the voices of the ancestors. Each time we plant a seed, we become ancestors for the generations to come. – Kenny Ausubel
The search for knowledge is in our genes. It was put there by our distant ancestors who spread across the world, and it’s never going to be quenched. – E. O. Wilson
Our ancestors worshipped the Sun, and they were not that foolish. It makes sense to revere the Sun and the stars, for we are their children. – Carl Sagan
We are connected, like it or not, to the ancestors of our biological families, and their templates. – Robert Moss
Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits. – Sallust
Indeed, if our ancestors of millions of years ago hadn’t learned how to care for one another and hunt in packs, they’d all have ended up being eaten by leopards. – Robert Shea
We are the ancestors of our grandchildren’s children. We look after them, just as our ancestors look after us. We aren’t here for ourselves. We are here for each other and for the children of our grandchildren. – Roy Sesana
Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don’t even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges. – Annie Lennox
We are the ancestors of the future and what we do now will have an impact. – Luisah Teish
Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned. That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions. – Walter Lippmann
