Heredity Quotes

“Jem made the little Scottish noise again, and Brianna looked sideways at him.
"Are you doing that on purpose?"
He looked up at her, surprised. "Doing what?"
"Never mind. When you are fifteen, I'm locking you in the cellar."
"What? Why?" he demanded indignantly.
"Because that's when your father and grandfather started getting into real trouble, and evidently you're going to be just like them.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Written in My Own Heart's Blood

“Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what do do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.”
― Jill Lepore

“A four-letter alphabet called DNA.”
― Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

“JACK: Yes, but said yourself that a severe chill was not hereditary.

ALGERNON: It usen't to be, I know - but I daresay it is now. Science is always making wonderful improvements in things.”
― Oscar Wilde

“What is in your blood matters, but not as much as what is in your heart.”
― Sonja Yoerg, All the Best People

“One who feels responsible for their community, needs no ancestor to define their identity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hurricane Humans: Give me accountability, I'll give you peace

“Hey Mommy,
What does sober mean?
"Oh, you shall never know darling."

Hey Granny,
What does trauma mean?
"Why, it's your inheritance darling.”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Escape from Narc Island

“The line from psychologists is, if you’ve seen it before, it hasn’t killed you yet.”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction

“Many races as well as cultural influences of men of all kinds have mixed into any man. To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory.”
― Richard Feynman

“I will not sleep
If that's what it takes
To not wake up
As my mother”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Hold Me Under: Poems to Drown to

“He was impressed with his father's fiction and noticed certain stylistic tics that he shared, and figured it was genetic. Why would genes determine only physical traits, eye color and left-handedness? Why not other, more subtle, bodiless proclivities such as a love of the semicolon and a propensity to string modifying clauses ad infinitum?”
― David Duchovny, Bucky F*cking Dent

“Repensei no corpo em desordem da professora, no corpo desgovernado de Melina. Sem uma razão evidente, comecei a olhar com atenção para as mulheres ao longo da estrada. De repente me veio a impressão de ter vivido com uma espécie de limitação do olhar: como se só fosse capaz de focalizar nosso grupo de meninas, Ada, Gigliola, Carmela, Marisa, Pinuccia, Lila, a mim mesma, minhas colegas de escola, e jamais tivesse realmente notado o corpo de Melina, o de Giuseppina Peluso, o de Nunzia Cerullo, o de Maria Carracci. O único corpo de mulher que eu tinha examinado com crescente preocupação era a figura claudicante de minha mãe, e apenas por aquela imagem me sentira perseguida, ameaçada, temendo até agora que ela se impusesse de chofre à minha própria imagem. Naquela ocasião, ao contrário, vi nitidamente as mães da família do bairro velho. Eram nervosas, eram aquiescentes. Silenciavam de lábios cerrados e ombros curvos ou gritavam insultos terríveis aos filhos que as atormentavam. Arrastavam-se magérrimas, com as faces e os olhos encavados, ou com traseiros largos, tornozelos inchados, as sacolas de compra, os meninos pequenos que se agarravam às suas saias ou queriam ser levados no colo. E, meu Deus, tinham dez, no máximo vinte anos a mais do que eu. No entanto pareciam ter perdido os atributos femininos aos quais nós, jovens, dávamos tanta importância e que púnhamos em evidência com as roupas, com a maquiagem. Tinham sido consumidas pelo corpo dos maridos, dos pais, dos irmãos, aos quais acabavam sempre se assemelhando, ou pelo cansaço ou pela chegada da velhice, pela doença. Quando essa transformação começava? Com o trabalho doméstico? Com as gestações? Com os espancamentos? Lila se deformaria como Nunzia? De seu rosto delicado despontaria Fernando, seu andar elegante se transmutaria nas passadas abertas e braços afastados do tronco, de Rino? E também meu corpo, um dia, cairia em escombros, deixando emergir não só o de minha mãe, mas ainda o do pai? E tudo o que eu estava aprendendo na escola se dissolveria, o bairro tornaria a prevalecer, as cadências, os modos, tudo se confundiria numa lama escura, Anaximandro e meu pai, Fólgore e dom Achille, as valências e os pântanos, os aoristos, Hesíodo e a vulgariadade arrogante dos Solara, como de resto há milênios acontecia na cidade, sempre mais decomposta, sempre mais degradada?”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name

“You have no identity until you make one with your actions.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hurricane Humans: Give me accountability, I'll give you peace

“Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.”
― Epictetus, Fragments

“Our lives intersect and interfere and there is no telling where certain beauties might come from. Some song in her heart where otherwise there wouldn't have been one and in Sarah's too passed on down.”
― Michael Byers, Percival's Planet

“The things you experience," she continued, "are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record. Maybe the only things that persist are----copies of things. The original has long since passed away from this universe, but on and on we copy. I have devoted my miniscule life to the act of copying.”
― Madeleine Thien

“...imitation supplements inadequate congenital variations in the direction of an instinct, and so, by keeping the creature alive, sets the trend of further variations in the same direction until the instinct is fully organized and congenital. If both of these views be true, as there seems reason to believe, then imitation holds a remarkable position in relation to intelligence and instinct. It stands midway between them and aids them both. In some functions it keeps the performance going, and so allows of its perfection as an instinct; in others it puts a stress on intelligence, and so allows the instinct to fall away, if it have no independent utility in addition to that served by the intelligence. In other words, it is through imitation that instincts both arise and decay; that is, some instincts are furthered, and some suppressed, by imitation.”
― Karl Groos, The Play of Animals

“Malcolm Gladwell can’t help being a pinhead. He was probably born that way.”
― Gregory Cochran

“Eugenics is not just a tool of totalitarianism. Eugenics, as it was conceived, could not be anything but totalitarian as it desired to control all aspects of society. Hitler’s “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialist) form of government was amongst the first to put the full force of its government to conduct compulsory health initiatives. It is by no coincidence that the Dachau concentration camp used its slave-labor to run the largest organic produce farm of the era.”
― A.E. Samaan, H.H. Laughlin: American Scientist, American Progressive, Nazi Collaborator

“Poverty is hereditary just like power, stupidity, and haemorrhoids.”
― Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Tram 83

“It is true that humans have physical differences, and some of those differences are spread geographically across the plant. But clinging to old notions about race won't help us understand the nature of those differences—both the ones we can see and the ones we can't.”
― Carl Zimmer, She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

“It is true that humans have physical differences, and some of those differences are spread geographically across the planet. But clinging to old notions about race won't help us understand the nature of those differences—both the ones we can see and the ones we can't.”
― carl zimmer

“Apples don't fall far from the tree. If you do fall too far, you are probably not from the tree.”
― Et Imperatrix Noctem

“In addition to the often unsatisfactory cards dealt to us by heredity...each of us will, throughout our lives, suffer innumerable encounters with disease, injury, emotional trauma, and personal defeat. These stochastic encounters are cumulative, and many of them will even come to shape core parts of our beings. But are our identities inextricably linked to our imperfections, struggles and genetic blemishes?”
― Ezra Claytan Daniels, Upgrade Soul

“People who are indulged in color discrimination might be having either color blindness or cruel blindness.”
― Dr Sivakumar Gowder

“One of them was directly descended from Nathaniel Hawthorne who wrote 'The Scarlet letter'. Mom says everybody immediately began to feel oppressed by their humble backgrounds because they'd forgotten (or didn't know) that anyone who's descended from Nathaniel Hawthorne is also a descendant of John Hathorne, the Salem judge who put just about as many innocent people to death as he could, so was it any wonder that Hawthorne was so good at describing what it felt like to be racked with guilt day and night.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Boy, Snow, Bird

“Respect shouldn't be hereditary; it must be earned.”
― Sayem Sarkar

“The DNA in your body determines your hair, your height, your eye color. It does not decide that you are going to get joy out of causing pain and hurting others like he did. It does not decide that you will break down other people so you can stand taller. You decide that, Blair. You get to choose. You get to be whoever the hell you want to be, and honestly, I think you made that choice a long time ago.”
― Addison Jane, Illusive

“English: "One becomes immortal when their thoughts would be accepted even by their murderer."

Česky: „Nesmrtelným se stává ten, jehož myšlenky by i jeho vrah přijal za své.”
― Sebastián Wortys