Loss of Heritage Quotes

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.

England has become the habitation of outsiders and the dominion of foreigners. Today, no Englishman is earl, bishop, or abbot, and newcomers gnaw away at the riches and very innards of England; nor is there any hope for an end of this misery.

The nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.

People thought they could explain and conquer nature-yet the outcome is that they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it.

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.

History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.

We created a thing called culture and civilization, and now we're about to lose it because we're trying to destroy everything. And I kind of miss it. I miss culture and civilization.

I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I'm watching it burn right to the ground.

A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.

The almighty dollar and the lust for world wide fame, slowly killed tradition, and for that someone should hang.

If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite - the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment - is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re-inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.

For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.

The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages.

All migrants leave their pasts behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxes-but on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementoes and old photographs, until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of migrants to be stripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see rich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging.

They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to me in the past!

To me, England is past its sell-by date. It's not the country I grew up in.

The study of tavern history often brings to light much evidence of sad domestic changes. Many a cherished and beautiful home, rich in annals of family prosperity and private hospitality, ended its days as a tavern.

Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders.

I do want to keep the Wedgewood Collection in place, intact, and open to the public. Selling it off would be a real tragedy.

Communism destroyed so many generations. I look at my grandparents and their generation, and it's as if their lives were taken from them. It's really sad and frightening that something like that could have happened. But I don't really think of myself as Russian anymore. I didn't even live there for that long.

Europe is dying. That is one of the unsayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it.

The teachings of Elijah Muhammad on how black people have been brainwashed.How they've been taught to love white and hate black, how we've been robbed of our names in slavery.We were robbed of our culture, we were robbed of our true history. So it left us a walking dead man.

The accusation that we've lost our soul resonates with a very modern concern about authenticity.