“Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us.”

— James Nasmyth

Source: James Nasmyth engineer, 1883, p. 1
Context: Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. The sentiment of ancestry seems to be inherent in human nature, especially in the more civilised races. At all events, we cannot help having a due regard for the history of our forefathers. Our curiosity is stimulated by their immediate or indirect influence upon ourselves. It may be a generous enthusiasm, or, as some might say, a harmless vanity, to take pride in the honour of their name. The gifts of nature, however, are more valuable than those of fortune; and no line of ancestry, however honourable, can absolve us from the duty of diligent application and perseverance, or from the practice of the virtues of self-control and self-help.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

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James Nasmyth 9

Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor 1808–1890

Robert Atkyns (judge) (1621–1710) Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Lords

11 How. St. Tr. 1204.
Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686)

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives…”

Franz Kafka book The Great Wall of China

Source: The Great Wall of China

“Speech is our most valuable instrument, because we can make it fit our common lives. We are not born to follow words. Words follow life. It has always been so from the very beginning. In fact, the human larynx and the shape of the passages above it have evolved in harmony with the lives our earliest ancestors lived, first in the trees, and then on the ground.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: The tongues of men. 1937, p. 25 (1968; 24)

“We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.”

Shirley Abbott (1934)

Source: Womenfolks: Growing Up Down South (1983), p. 1 (opening lines)

“Our fight is with money. Work alone will help us, not money. We must smash interest slavery. Our fight is with the races that represent money.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech at the hall of Zum Deutschen Reich (December 18, 1919), quoted in Thomas Weber, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (Basic Books, 2017), p. 138. Police report of DAP meeting, SAM, DPM/6697
1910s

“We are not primitive. We live differently to you, but we do not live exactly like our grandparents did, nor do you. Were your ancestors 'primitive'? I don't think so. We respect our ancestors. We love our children. This is the same for all people.”

Roy Sesana (1950) Botswana activist

Source: Acceptance Speech for The Right Livelihood Award http://www.rightlivelihood.org/fpk_sesana_speech.html

“Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us.... We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur? ([http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/orator.shtml#120 120])

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Variant translation: To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child.
Chapter XXXIV, section 120
Orator Ad M. Brutum (46 BC)
Variant: Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?

“When the rains have fallen down
We can live our lives underground
No recollection of before
We'll make our own history
Fulfill our destiny
For sure, we can save humanity”

D. S. Bradford (1982) musician

A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/D-S-Bradford/A-Call-to-the-Stars-Ii-A-Home-in-the-Sky, verse 1
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky (2016)

“Our body begins to destroy itself from the moment it is born. We are fragile. We’re creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

“Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us.”

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James Nasmyth 9

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