Ruby Laffoon - Ancestors

Famous quotes containing the word ancestors:

“The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.”
—Dorothy Day (1897–1980)

“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 (1743–1826)