Best Ancestry Quotes to Inspire, Uplift & Motivate You Every Day

“The other piece about tracing your ancestry is it makes you slightly more empathetic about what happens today. As we seem to have lost a certain sense of humanity for and among each other.”

“My father's family didn't really know much about our ancestry. I mean, they had the story that I think a lot of white Americans have, which is, well, we came from Europe. And we arrived here.”

“My ancestry is really weird, because my great grandfather was from the Cayman Islands, and then his father was from England. But I lose track at that point.”

“Hip Hop is the rebirth of civilization. For people who were disconnected from their continent, from their language, from their culture, and from their ancestry, Hip Hop represented a step toward rediscovering what it means to be a Black American, or to be a Latino American.”

“We must be sure that Canadians realize that our political differences with the Communist government in China has nothing to do with the country of China, or its people. The millions of Canadians with Chinese ancestry are not connected to our diplomatic differences with Beijing.”

“Any nobody from the folk blues world could avoid being influenced by Woody Guthrie, who is actually of Scottish-Irish ancestry.”

“My knowledge of my ancestry, like a lot of black people not living in Africa today, is very vague.”

“I've always been fascinated by family ancestry.”

“I knew my mother was - well, her ancestry dated back to John Quincy Adams, so she was totally not Latina. She was definitely whatever you call it - white bread, shall we say?”

“In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.”

“I take a lot of pride in my ancestry and where I come from.”

“All of the guests on 'Faces of America' were deeply moved by what we revealed about their ancestry. We were able to trace the ancestry of Native American writer Louise Erdrich back to 438 A.D. We found that Queen Noor is descended from royalty, and that's before she married King Hussein of Jordan.”

“There are still Negro elites. Many of them are obviously much richer, and perhaps a little more integrated into what remains a white power structure. But those old rituals from the social clubs, to the broadly segregated white and black schools, to an obsessive interest in ancestry, all of that does still exist. Look: we are a class-bound society.”

“Like Barack Obama's father, Trump's mother was an immigrant. But Trump doesn't often bring up his Scottish ancestry on the campaign trail.”

“I get anxious. That lovely Jewish guilt that comes with ancestry.”

“Latinos are not monochromatic. You know, they trace their ancestry back to South America, to Central America, to Mexico, like in my family, and the Caribbean. And it's - we're a very diverse group. And we care about a lot more than just immigration, though we're passionate about having sensible immigration policies that don't go after our families.”

“I see myself as part English and part American, with a dash of Irish thrown in, and a pinch of Italian from my mother's ancestry.”

“I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.”

“My grandmother, my mother and my aunts and their friends were all of southern Chinese ancestry, and they were all strong figures. Though if you asked them who was the head of their families, they would have said their husbands; and yet it was the women who ran everything.”

“I've done DNA tests and I've got two per cent Neanderthal DNA - most people have. If your ancestry is northern hemisphere, it's likely that you have got some Neanderthal DNA. That's why I've got a big forehead!”

“Some people will deny anything that displeases or scares them: unusual pain in their chests, unwanted lumps beneath their skin, or the fact that humans share ancestry with apes are a few examples. Another is climate change.”

“It is worthwhile for anyone to have behind him a few generations of honest, hard-working ancestry.”

“Character is better than ancestry, and personal conduct is of more importance than the highest.”

“Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty.”

“Trump is more performance artist than zealot. But he's finding enemies everywhere, whether they are judges of Mexican ancestry, parents of those killed in war, the current president, or children of immigrants. Whether or not he has a sense of decency, he is in grave danger of losing it.”

“I'm crazy about Dublin. If you went back 3,000 years in my ancestry you wouldn't find a drop of Irish blood in the veins, but I love the place.”

“People like to trace their ancestry.”

“In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white.”

“I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.”

“The secret to a long-lasting relationship is perpetually imagining the worst. It's a world view tracing back to my Eastern European ancestry and one I draw upon regularly.”

“I do feel Scottish in some way. Maybe it's to do with visiting my grandparents here every summer as a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ancestry. It's there all right, but it would be pushing it to label me a Scottish painter. Or, indeed, an anywhere painter.”

“If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry - yours and mine - back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet.”

“For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans.”

“I discovered that there is Indian blood in my ancestry on my father's side - a fact that had not been talked about in my family. No wonder I've often been cast in exotic roles - Indian princesses, Russian revolutionaries, Algerians, Gypsies and Greeks.”

“The Trail of Tears has a great deal of meaning for every person of American Indian ancestry, whether they are Cherokee or not. For me, it has always stood for what is best and worst about the history of the United States.”

“'Cullum' is Scottish, but I'm nowhere near Scottish. My mother is Burmese, and my father is of German, Jewish, English ancestry.”

“If we remind ourselves of the fact that every fifth American today rightly points and perhaps also with a certain degree of pride to his German ancestry or her German ancestry, we can safely say that we, indeed, share common roots.”

“I have Spanish ancestry and, indeed, speak the language, up to a point.”

“My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry.”

“When I'm in England, I know I'm a visitor, but being a white man in England with ancestry that's German and Italian, I have a history with the Romans and the Saxons. I feel some connection and ancestry here, as weird as that sounds.”

“Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name.”

“While researching my ancestry I have unearthed many skeletons. It would seem that I come from a long line of ne'er-do-wells, especially on my mother's side.”

“Women are outperforming men in almost every sphere of life in our society and the women of East Indian ancestry are no exception to this rule. They have broken the cultural mould.”

“People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects.”

“By ancestry, I was born to rule.”

“I've got some Jewish ancestry and I don't like waste.”

“When you start about family, about lineage and ancestry, you are talking about every person on earth.”

“Our names were made for us in another century.”

“This is what Ireland does. It calls her children home.”

“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until...”

“Aye. I’m afraid for my immortal soul now.”

“The Earth is more than scenery—it is ancestry.”