# Quotations

"Family history is the Motherland" (Pushkin, Aleksandr (Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin)).

"Contempt of ancestors is the first sign of savagery and immorality" (Pushkin, Aleksandr (Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin)).

"We all carry, inside us, people who came before us." -- Liam Callanan

"Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you are lucky enough to be a genealogist, you are lucky enough." -- Ruth Padilla

"Friends come and go, but relatives tend to accumulate." -- Unknown

"If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree." -- Michael Crichton

"We inherit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted. Each of us contains within this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise." -- Edward Sellner

"We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors wisdom." -- Maya Angelou

"Some family trees have beautiful leaves, and some have just a bunch of nuts. Remember, it is the nuts that make the tree worth shaking." -- Unknown

"The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between the things we think we know about our families and the realities." -- Jeremy Hardy

"Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponents will do it for you." -- Mark Twain

"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten; Either write things worthy of reading, or do things worthy of writing." -- Benjamin Franklin, May 1738

"There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children - one is roots, and the other, wings." -- Hodding S. Carter

"When a society or a civilization perishes, one condition can always be found. They forgot where they came from." -- Carle Sandburg

"We are the children of many sires, and every drop of blood in us in its turn ... betrays its ancestor." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." -- Edmund Burke

"Everyone has ancestors and it is only a question of going back far enough to find a good one." -- Howard Kenneth Nixon

"It is a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors." -- Plutarch

"'Genealogy' Tracing yourself back to people better than you are." -- John Garland Pollard

"I don't have to look up my family tree because I know that I'm the sap." -- Fred Allen

"We inherit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted. Each of us contains within this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise." -- Edward Sellner

"We've uncovered some embarrassing ancestors in the not-too-distant past. Some horse thieves, and some people killed on Saturday nights. One of my relatives, unfortunately, was even in the newspaper business." -- Jimmy Carter

"Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to." -- Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

"History is the essence of innumerable biographies." -- Thomas Carlyle

"The story of his great-grandfather . . . was his own story, too." -- Kelly Cherry, The Exiled Heart: A Meditative Autobiography

"In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts." -- Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

"Every succeeding generation has the opportunity to heal the wounds of the past." -- Laurence Overmire, A Revolutionary American Family: The McDonalds of Somerset County, New Jersey

"Some of us are given more time on this Earth than others, but none of us should ever take the gift of life for granted. If we strive to be the best we can be, committing ourselves to what is right and true, while helping others along the way, then we will leave our own story worth the telling and be a shining example for our children and our grandchildren and all those great, great, great, great grandchildren in those far off times to come." -- Laurence Overmire, A Revolutionary American Family: The McDonalds of Somerset County, New Jersey

"One could only wish there were more who understood the love of family, of history, and of ancient, sacred bonds that grow deep within us all. If family is not worthy of our time and attention, who or what is?" -- Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants

"We are just stars in our family's constellation" -- Stephen Robert Kuta

"My charge, then, in putting down my pen, and giving over this work to posterity, is this: Take the time. Take the time to preserve the stories, the photographs, the small mementos that mean so much. This is your legacy to future generations. Give it the attention it deserves. Your children and your grandchildren will thank you for it." -- Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants

"All of our ancestors give us the precious gift of life. Do we use it wisely? Do we use it well? Do we make a name for ourselves and for our children of which we can be proud?" -- Laurence Overmire, A Revolutionary American Family: The McDonalds of Somerset County, New Jersey

"One can never be 100% certain when it comes to family lineage. One must always keep an open mind, willing to go wherever the facts may lead." -- Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants

"All of us are part of a beautiful pageantry of human experience. Let us make the most of this life in all we do." -- Laurence Overmire, A Revolutionary American Family: The McDonalds of Somerset County, New Jersey

"The sacrifice our ancestors gave yesterday gave us today and our tomorrow" -- Stephen Robert Kuta, Selina's Letter, Tales of Suicide from Victorian and Edwardian London

"Just like our ancestors, we too will fall out of living memory and be forgotten. It will take a future genealogist to find us again. Make it a good find." -- Stephen Robert Kuta

"We are the accumulation of the dreams of generations" -- Stephen Robert Kuta

"Woven of fad and fancy, commerce and technology, war and revolution, freedom and necessity, our individual histories testify to the singular but crooked paths along which we traveled to the present." -- Joseph A. Amato, Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History

"The family historian must master the art of storytelling. What, after all, is truth without anecdote, history without events, explanation without narration--or yet life itself without a story? Stories are not just the wells from which we drink most deeply but at the same time the golden threads that hold and bind--Ariadne's precious string that leads us through the labyrinth that connects living present and the living past." -- Joseph A. Amato, Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History

"How can we know where we are going if we don’t know where we came from?" -- Becky Williamson-Martin

"Your ancestors are rooting for you." -- Eleanor Brownn

"History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all." -- Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants

"There is no such thing as an insignificant life, only the insignificance of mind that refuses to grasp the implications." -- Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants

"Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot." -- Tim Wise

"My forebears played a significant part in making me who I am. I honor their legacy. I will never forget what they gave me. I will love them until the day I die. And no one can take them away from me." -- Laurence Overmire, The Ghost of Rabbie Burns: An American Poet's Journey Through Scotland

"Rather than following a [genealogical] 'line', I find myself drawn to all the people I encounter, including those who, only by the most obtuse reckoning, can be thought of as relatives. Every life deserves telling; none is without drama and change." -- Alison Light

"Over the course of the millennia, all these multitudes of ancestors, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time—to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind?" -- Laurence Overmire, One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants

"When you trace your genealogy, you find connections to many of the people and events that shaped history. History is not the story of some old irrelevant strangers. No. History is your story. Your family was there - your grandmothers and grandfathers, uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces. If not for them, you wouldn't even be here." -- Laurence Overmire, The Ghost of Rabbie Burns: An American Poet's Journey Through Scotland

"As a genealogist, I have seen the Big Picture as very few have. Most people now living have no clue who they are or where they come from. We are all descended from the ancient kings of our various cultures. There is nothing unique about it. And let's be honest, most of those kings were pretty ruthless individuals. What's important for us today is that we wake up to the fact that we are all literally cousins. How would our world change if we honored that relationship and started treating one another as family?" -- Laurence Overmire, The Ghost of Rabbie Burns: An American Poet's Journey Through Scotland

"A person in search of his ancestors naturally likes to believe the best of them, and the best in terms of contemporary standards. Where genealogical facts are few, and these located in the remote past, reconstruction of family history is often more imaginative than correct." -- James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History

"Our stories make us who we are. And each story has its own purpose and its own reward. Each story rings true and each story is worthy of the ages. There is no such thing as an insignificant life." -- Laurence Overmire, New York Minute: An Actor's Memoir

"All of our ancestors live within each one of us whether we are aware of it or not." -- Laurence Overmire

"Everyone has a story. Every story matters." -- Nicole Wedemeyer Miller

"All our ancestors were murdered, murderers, complicit to murder, or combating murder." -- Lucy Knisley, An Age of License: A Travelogue

"Through the various branches of your tree, you are connected to the entirety of human history. When we talk about the ancient Egyptians building the pyramids, we're not talking about a bunch of exotic strangers, we're talking about our great-great-many-times-great grandparents!" -- Laurence Overmire, Digging for Ancestral Gold: The Fun and Easy Way to Get Started on Your Genealogy Quest

"An honest, poor, but otherwise unremarkable man and his loving, tender-hearted wife, though long forgotten and lost to history, may have been the ancestors who are most worthy of our admiration today." -- Laurence Overmire, Digging for Ancestral Gold: The Fun and Easy Way to Get Started on Your Genealogy Quest

"If you can make your ancestors real for yourself, learn their stories and who they were, your life - and death - will take on added meaning. You will see yourself in the Big Picture that includes all human life that has come and gone on the planet." -- Laurence Overmire, Digging for Ancestral Gold: The Fun and Easy Way to Get Started on Your Genealogy Quest

"A personal journey is part of the generational relay. Live your legacy then pass it on." -- Jo Ann V. Glim

"..what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we lived. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage." -- Ellen Goodman

"We are all the product of things we've never seen and people we never met. In fact, if just one little detail had been changed in their lives, we may not even exist!" -- Melanie Johnston

"Most people get excited over new cars; I get excited over death certificates. It's no wonder my husband worries about my state of mind." -- Rett MacPherson, Family Skeletons

"Look to the past to see what the future holds." -- Celia Conrad, Wilful Murder

"Politics is always related to the history and genealogy." -- Toba Bet