Quotes Tagged "heritage"

We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.

I could do worse than become my own grandma, or anyone of the strong women who raised us. Our strengths emerged from theirs; we build on their heritage and transform their resilience and competence into our own.

You are one woman in an endless line of women who were chosen to love more passionately than others, be committed to justice more fervently than others, and seek our Maker’s higher expressions more reflectively than others.

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

When I reflect on the legacies left behind from my childhood, I am indebted to acknowledge the role my mother, grandmother, and godmothers played in my spiritual formation and personal development.

To be completely ignorant of the collective past seems to me to be another state of amnesia; you would be untethered, adrift in time. Which is why all societies have sought some kind of memory bank, whether by way of folklore, story-telling, recitation of the ancestors--from Homer to Genesis. And why the heritage industry does so well today; most people may not be particularly interested in the narrative of the past, in the detail or the discussion, but they are glad to know that it is there.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

I firmly believe that American society would not endure ten years if subjected to half the trials and tortures we’ve put Natives through. And yet Native peoples have not been utterly destroyed, not by the world’s strongest military. They have not been totally assimilated, not by the world’s largest religion. Native religions are indeed concerned with being a good person, respecting one’s family, ancestors, community, and the Earth—and when these principles are lived, there is great strength.

But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees.

On the one hand, she is cut off from the protection awarded to her sisters abroad; on the other, she has no such power to defend her interests at the polls, as is the heritage of her brothers at home.

My first instrument was an accordion. Growing up in Louisiana, my grandmother gave me an accordion because of our Cajun heritage.

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

I'm African-American. I'd rather follow an African religion. That's my heritage.

People are becoming more and more aware of how the dominance of development and business is altering their lives and, in particular, their own heritage.

For 180 years, we voted in English. That is the true American tradition, and this amendment is true to our heritage, not what has existed unnaturally for the last 20 years.

I never sought nor gained personal benefit in school or job applications based on my heritage.

I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

My dream is to map every archaeological site in the world because, if we can do that, then we have this massive global data base that all sorts of global heritage organizations and heritage organizations within countries can use, and they can use that information to protect what's there.

Complex astronomical instruments like the Antikythera Mechanism and the Nebra Sky Disk were made by Pagans. Our Pagan intellectual heritage includes poets and scientists and literary intellectuals of every kind, especially including those who wrote some of the most important and influential books in all of Western history.

The thing that is being lost is heritage. In Africa, religion and advertisement and television and media hype have gotten Africans to where they are convinced psychologically that their own heritage is heathen, pagan, barbaric, savage, primitive.