Best 137 quotes in «ancestry quotes» category

All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?

A Nation... is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry, and a common dislike of their neighbors

A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.

Birth and ancestry, and that which we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own.

And, you know, the fact is, if you believe in evolution, we all have a common ancestor, and we all have a common ancestry with the plant in the lobby. This is what evolution tells us. And, it's true. It's kind of unbelievable.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Born in a cellar, and living in a garret.

Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

Current organisms have a higher probability of sharing a single code if the common ancestry hypothesis is true than they'd have if the hypothesis of separate ancestry were true. That is, the simpler hypothesis has the higher likelihood in the technical sense of "likelihood" used in statistics.

Darwin repeatedly used the hypothesis of common ancestry as a platform on which to build his various ideas about testing hypotheses concerning natural selection. He also argued that adaptive similarities provide little or no evidence for common ancestry. Although this second claim needs to be fine-tuned, Darwin was right that ample evidence for common ancestry can exist even if none of the characteristics we observe were caused to evolve by natural selection.

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

Character is better than ancestry, and personal conduct is more important than the highest parentage.

Few sons attain the praise Of their great sires and most their sires disgrace.

High birth is an accident, not a virtue.

Great families of yesterday we show, And lords, whose parents were the Lord knows who.

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.

For those of us who are fortunate to share an Irish ancestry, we take great pride in the contributions that Irish-Americans.

Good breeding, a union of kindness and independence.

High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.

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

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate.

If your descent is from heroic sires, Show in your life a remnant of their fires.

I didn't know much about my Native American ancestry, but as I got older I became more interested in it.

I do have a muse. I am not sure how to describe her. She can be very elusive. She was born in England but has Mediterranean ancestry.

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.

I grew up in North Devon, by the sea, and feel a special affinity for the landscape there, despite a lack of actual ancestry.

It is better to be the builder of our own name than to be indebted by descent for the proudest gifts known to the books of heraldry.

In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is frequently lost.

It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.

It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

It is the highest of earthly honors to be descended from the great and good. They alone cry out against a noble ancestry who have none of their own.

It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.

It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.

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

It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.

My forefathers didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.

I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers.

Maybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea

Pedigree and ancestry and what we ourselves have not achieved, I scarcely recognize as our own.

My life shall be free and broad and great, and I will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancestry. I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwise?

No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

Nobility of birth is like a cipher; it has no power in itself, like wealth or talent; but, it tells with all the power of a cipher when added to either of the other two.

No man is nobler born than another, unless he is born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition. They who make such a parade with their family pictures and pedigrees, are, properly speaking, rather to be called noted or notorious than noble persons. I thought it right to say this much, in order to repel the insolence of men who depend entirely upon chance and accidental circumstances for distinction, and not at all on public services and personal merit.

Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire's parent.

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

Pride thyself on what virtue thou hast, and not on thy parentage.