Hereditary Quotes

• Wrinkles are hereditary. Parents get them from their children.

  Doris Day

  Children, Wrinkles, Parent

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children.

  Sam Levenson

  Funny, Mothers Day, Hilarious

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• A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Science, Ideas

  "Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 14, p. 244, 1985.

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• I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

  James Whistler

  Heaven, Intelligence, Genius

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• When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

  Thomas Paine

  Pain, War, 4th Of July

  Thomas Paine (2015). “Common Sense: and The American Crisis I”, p.38, Penguin

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

  James Nasmyth

  Race, Influence, Born

  James Nasmyth (2010). “James Nasmyth, Engineer: An Autobiography”, p.1, BoD – Books on Demand

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• Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.

  Edward Gibbon

  Government, History, British Monarchy

  Edward Gibbon (1821). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.197

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• There are heads of royal families who control hereditary fortunes that defy comprehension.

  Paul Getty

  Royal, Economy, Fortune

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• I think the whole under-eye-bag thing is hereditary, and I just got lucky.

  Julianna Margulies

  Eye, Thinking, Lucky

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• We stand a better chance with aristocracy, whether hereditary or elective, than with monarchy.

  Ezra Stiles

  Aristocracy, Chance, Monarchy

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• The greater part of the governments on earth may be termed monarchical aristocracies, or hereditary dominions independent of the people.

  Ezra Stiles

  Independent, Government, People

  Ezra STILES (1785). “The United States Elevated to Glory and Honour; a Sermon [on Deut. Xxvi. 19] ... Second Edition, Corrected”, p.26

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• Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

  Walter Scott

  Wisdom, Children, Grace

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• Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Beauty, Beautiful, Attitude

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.175, University of Georgia Press

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• 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 to do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.

  Jill Lepore

  Trying, Way, Next

  "Fixed" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. March 29, 2010.

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• I don't believe in the hereditary principle in the House of Lords. Imagine going to the dentist, sitting in the chair and he says, 'I'm not a dentist myself, but my father was a dentist and his father before him. Now, open wide!

  Tony Benn

  Father, Believe, House

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• Knowledge acquired in biological research is seldom directly applicable to human beings ... The results of scientific research, obtained under these conditions, cannot be applied directly to human beings who vary widely in their hereditary make-up, in their environment, and in their past health record.

  John Boyd Orr

  Animal, Past, Records

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• I was born with this. It's a hereditary genetic condition. This is something you can go your whole life without really knowing that something's wrong. I had high blood pressure, and that was the first sign.

  Steven Cojocaru

  Blood, Knowing, Pressure

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• I have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense.

  James Bryce

  Equality, Thinking, Rights

  James Bryce Bryce (1888). “The American Commonwealth”, Ams PressInc

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• Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother ten, Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies.

  John Dryden

  Mother, Eye, Men

  John Dryden, George Rapall Noyes (1950). “The poetical works of Dryden”

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• Biologists have long attempted by chemical means to induce in higher organisms predictable and specific changes which thereafter could be transmitted in series as hereditary characters. Among microorganisms the most striking example of inheritable and specific alterations in cell structure and function that can be experimentally induced and are reproducible under well defined and adequately controlled conditions is the transformation of specific types of Pneumococcus.

  Oswald Avery

  Character, Mean, Cells

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• Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of a thousand intellects.

  Samuel Johnson

  Knowledge, Science, Understanding

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.199, Univ of California Press

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• The nucleic acids, as constituents of living organisms, are comparable In importance to proteins. There is evidence that they are Involved In the processes of cell division and growth, that they participate In the transmission of hereditary characters, and that they are important constituents of viruses. An understanding of the molecular structure of the nucleic acids should be of value In the effort to understand the fundamental phenomena of life.

  Linus Pauling

  Life, Character, Science

  Linus Pauling, Barclay Kamb (2001). “Linus Pauling: Biomolecular sciences”, p.1123, World Scientific

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• Think of it : zillions and zillions of organisms running around, each under the hypnotic spell of a single truth, all these truths identical, and all logically incompatible with one another : 'My hereditary material is the most important material on earth; its survival justifies your frustration, pain, even death'. And you are one of those organisms, living your life in the thrall of a logical absurdity.

  Robert Wright

  Running, Pain, Frustration

  Robert Wright (2010). “The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology”, p.440, Vintage

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• The argument advanced by the supporters of the theory of hereditary transmission does not furnish a satisfactory explanation of the cause of the inequalities and diversities of the universe.

  Swami Abhedananda

  Science, Diversity, Doe

  Swami Abhedananda (2005). “Vedanta Philosophy”, p.34, 1st World Publishing

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• For it is not cell nuclei, not even individual chromosomes, but certain parts of certain chromosomes from certain cells that must be isolated and collected in enormous quantities for analysis; that would be the precondition for placing the chemist in such a position as would allow him to analyse [the hereditary material] more minutely than [can] the morphologists ... For the morphology of the nucleus has reference at the very least to the gearing of the clock, but at best the chemistry of the nucleus refers only to the metal from which the gears are formed.

  Theodor Boveri

  Enormous Quantities, Cells, Would Be

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