Christopher Hitchens  - Quotes

 Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where 



Christopher Hitchens  - Quotes

 There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don 

Christopher Hitchens  - Quotes

 I have had my mother's wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the National Geographic tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way of the Levant, and passing through Eastern and Central Europe before crossing to the British Isles. And all of this knowable by an analysis of the cells on the inside of my mouth.



I almost prefer the more rambling and indirect and journalistic investigation, which seems somehow less
 

Tags: africa   ancestry   determinism   genealogy   genetics   history   investigation   journalism   levant   savanna     


C.S. Lewis  - Quotes

 Human beings look separate because you see them walking about separately. But then we are so made that we can see only the present moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would look different. For there was a time when every man was part of his mother, and (earlier still) part of his father as well, and when they were part of his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as God sees it, it would look like one single growing thing--rather like a very complicated tree. Every individual would appear connected with every other. 

Tags: ancestry     
John Barrymore  - Quotes

 There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless.  

Tags: ancestry     
David Wroblewski  - Quotes

 So a dog's value came from the training AND the breeding. And by breeding, Edgar supposed he meant both the bloodlines - the particular dogs in their ancestry - and all the information in the file cabinets. Because the files, with their photographs, measurements, notes, charts, cross-references, and scores, told the STORY of the dog - what a MEANT as his father put it. (180) 

Tags: ancestry   animals   breeding   dogs   history     
Isaac Asimov  - Quotes

 I am not impressed by ancestry, since if I could trace my origins to Judas Maccabeus or to King David, that would not add one inch to my stature, either physically, mentally or ethically. What's more, what about all my other ancestors? There must have been uncounted thousands of human beings in the century of King David, all of whom in some small way contributed to my production, and every one of them but King David might have been criminals and drunkards for all I know. (Nor was King David himself entirely unremarkable for his ethical standards.) 

Tags: ancestry     


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