“I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance.”
Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss.
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James A. Michener 55
American author 1907–1997Related quotes

“Translated: Ah, my faith! I know nothing about it; I am my own ancestor.”
Ah, ma foi! Je n'en sais rien. Moi je suis mon ancêtre.
When needled about his lack of noble ancestry, recounted in Sydney Smith, Saba Holland, A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith (1855), p. 245. Compare: "Curtius Rufus seems to me to be descended from himself", Tacitus recounting a saying of Tiberius, Annals, book xi. c. xxi. 16.; "To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates [a shoemaker’s son] for his mean birth, 'My nobility,' said he, 'begins in me, but yours ends in you'", Plutarch Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders, Iphicrates (rejected by some critics as not a genuine work of Plutarch).

“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”

2010s, 2016, October, Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016)

“One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.”

“I know nothing and my heart aches”