Quotes about Genealogy

Genealogy becomes a mania, an obsessive struggle to penetrate the past and snatch meaning from an infinity of names.  At some point the search becomes futile - there is nothing left to find, no meaning to be dredged out of old receipts, newspaper articles, letters, accounts of events that seemed so important fifty or seventy years ago.  All that remains is the insane urge to keep looking, insane because the searcher has no idea what he seeks.  What will it be?  A photograph?  A will?  A fragment of a letter?  The only way to find out is to look at everything, because it is often when the searcher has gone far beyond the border of futility that he finds the object he never knew he was looking for.

Over the course of the millennia, all these ancestors in your tree, 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?

There is no such thing as an insignificant life, only the insignificance of mind that refuses to grasp the implications.

There is no nobler profession, nor no greater calling, than to be among those unheralded many who gave and give their lives to the preservation of human knowledge, passed with commitment and care from one generation to the next.

History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all.