"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
"When a society or a civilization perishes, one condition can always be found. They forgot where they came from."
— Carl Sandburg
"In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness."
— Alex Haley, Roots
"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
"If you shake your family tree, watch for the nuts to fall."