ANCESTORS 
1. Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. From our ancestors come our names, but from our virtues our honors. ~Unknown
3. Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. ~Thomas Jefferson
4. I don't know who my grandfather was; I'm much more concerned to know what his grandson will be. ~Abraham Lincoln
5. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
6. If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people. ~Thich Nhat Hanh
7. In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from. ~Alex Haley
8. It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. ~Plutarch
9. It is often said that something may survive of a person after his death if that person was an artist and put a little of himself into his work. It is perhaps in the same way that a sort of cutting taken from one person and grafted onto the heart of another continues to carry on its existence even when the person from whom it had been detached has perished. ~Marcel Proust
10. Let our posterity know that we their ancestors, uncultured and unlearned, amid all trials and temptations, were men of integrity. ~ Alexander Crummell
11. Let them look to the past, but let them also look to the future; let them look to the land of their ancestors, but let them look also to the land of their children. ~Wilfrid Laurier
12. Mules are always boasting that their ancestors were horses. ~German Proverb
13. My first advice on how not to grow old would be to choose you ancestors carefully. ~Bertrand Russell
14. Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors. ~Jonas Salk
15. People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. ~Edmund Burke
16. So, as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants. ~Publius Cornelius Tacitus
17. The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
18. The kind of ancestors we have had is not as important as the kind of descendants our ancestors have. ~Unknown
19. There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. ~Helen Keller
20. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. ~G. K. Chesterton
21. We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching. ~Paul Tsongas
22. We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~David Brower