Genealogy Quotes

I had never thought much of genealogy. A lot of wasted time collecting the names of the dead. Then stringing those names, like skulls upon a wire, into an entirely private and thus irrelevant narrative, lacking any historical significance. The narcissistic pastime of nostalgic bores.

A personal journey is part of the generational relay. Live your legacy then pass it on.

History will be kind to me for I have written it. Winston Churchill

Ron Mayes

Look to the past to see what the future holds.

Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.

Orson Scott Card

Over the course of the millennia, all these multitudes of ancestors, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time—to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind?

Laurence Overmire

The story of his great-grandfather . . . was his own story, too.

Do try The House by fresh new author, Susannah Mansfield, it's funny, sad and very different, you'll love the characters and the stories.

Susannah Mansfield

Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot.

Tim Wise

I suppose it must be admitted that I was raised in a "dysfunctional" family, but in truth, I do not think I had any sense of that as I was growing up. Probably part of the reason was that all of my extended kin had families at least as dysfunctional as mine. Just to give a little of the flavor of it, my "Aunt Fern," who lived just across the street and was one of the most present and puissant female relatives in my life, was, to be genealogically precise, my mother's brother's, first wife's, second husband's, father's, 3rd, 4th, and 5th wife. (She married "Uncle Lew" three times in the course of her seven matrimonial ventures.)

Carlfred Broderick

Your ancestors are rooting for you.

If you don't know history, you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree.

Michael Chrichton

All our ancestors were murdered, murderers, complicit to murder, or combating murder.

The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.

The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

Meditation works in many layers. It works in our genes, in our DNA

Amit Ray

In united families, they might sleep with half filled stomach but no one sleeps with empty stomach.

You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian.

In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.

Some of us can live without a society but not without a family.