Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer
Time Magazine (27 March 1964).
“No doubt some of your cousins and great-uncles died in childhood, but not a single one of your ancestors did. Ancestors just don't die young!”
— Richard Dawkins, book The Selfish Gene
Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 3. Immortal Coils
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Richard Dawkins322
English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941Related quotes
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Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 50
Context: My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth, at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.
Roy Sesana (1950) Botswana activist
Source: Acceptance Speech for The Right Livelihood Award http://www.rightlivelihood.org/fpk_sesana_speech.html
Arrian (89–175) Roman historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the 2nd-century
Anabasis Alexandri II, 14, 4.
Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God
The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Enlighten the dark blood of your ancestors, shape their cries into speech, purify their will, widen their narrow, unmerciful brows. This is your second duty.
For you are not only a slave. As soon as you were born, a new possibility was born with you, a free heartbeat stormed through the great sunless heart of your race.
“Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.”
Tad Williams (1957) novelist
Source: Shadowrise