Quotes About Family Background

“At the turn of the twentieth century, the first wave of academic political scientists attacked some of their theoretical predecessors for the supposed mistake of assuming that human beings were entirely rational. This mistake had allegedly been made by politicians and theorists who had tried to appeal to voters in terms of purely rational argument. The new political scientists triumphantly pointed out that image, stereotype, the emotions arising in crowds, family background, and many other irrational factors were actually the main determinants of political behaviour.”

— Kenneth Minogue

“I need you to scry for Lousha," he said. "You told me once that you could."
"Yeah, I can get you in her vicinity."
Garreth had taken Lucia's scent into him and could find her from miles away.
"That'll work."
Witches could come in handy, he supposed.
"But I don't do gratis."
Garreth bluidy hated witches! "Charge me what you will! Just give me the fucking coordinates."
In the background, he heard Bowen say, "Mari, never let it be said that I doona support your extortion
"
"Entrepreneurial-ness," she corrected.
"But a family discount, love, would no' be amiss."
"The whole family? Fine," she said. "I'm scrying." While Garreth waited, she groused about how extended the "MacRieve pack" was.”

— Kresley Cole

“They will have difficulties to overcome,' I admitted. 'Including the differences in their religions. However, marriage is always a chancy business, Katherine. I have known individuals who appeared perfectly suited, by family background, religion, and nationality, who were thoroughly miserable.'
'So you believe in taking the chance?'
'Certainly. What is life without some risk?”

— Elizabeth Peters

“Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family background; they are measured by the size of their thinking.”

— John C. Maxwell

“I came from a very poor background. I came from children's homes; I came from a violent family, and against all the odds, I succeeded.”

— DeObia Oparei

“My family background was deeply Christian.”

— Abbe Pierre

“I believe God takes the things in our lives - family, background, education - and uses them as part of his calling. It might not be to become a pastor. But I don't think God wastes anything.”

— Eugene H. Peterson

“A liberal education ... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.”

— Robert M. Hutchins

“My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.”

— Alan Hovhaness

“The revolution is carried out by means of one's thought, not through one's family background.”

— Kim Jong Il

“My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It's pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another.”

— Ailyn Perez

“I like the fact that this kind of family has been seen in a movie a million times: teenage kids, the family is a bit strained and they don't have enough money, but in the background the guy used to be a Gene Simmons type.”

— Gary Cole

“I come from the slums; I come from a hard background; I come from a poor family; and I was a soldier.”

— Michael Caine

“I'm of Russian-Jewish background. Like many Soviet Jews, my parents were engineers. My family migrated from Ukraine to Israel when I was six. They arrived in Israel with very little ... Within a year of arriving in Israel, the Yom Kippur War happened.”

— Sasha Roiz

“My family background has always been very supportive. They're going to be there for me no matter what.”

— Mark Sanchez

“I don't come from money or an educated family background or any sort of supportive family life, so all of my choices are made on my own.”

— Cat Power

“I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren't really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins.”

— Teddy Thompson

“Children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social compositions, will achieve at quite different levels.”

— James S. Coleman

“My background is that I came from a middle class family, and I think those values stay where ever you go.”

— Nita Ambani

“I am quite international. My background, born in Turkey. My family is a Jewish family from Iran, so I went from Turkey to Iran to Israel, and then grew up in Italy and ended up in U.S. for graduate school. So I tend to look at things from an international perspective, and I think that gives you a little bit of a broader view of what's going on.”

— Nouriel Roubini

“I was born in a family with a strong military background, so I chose to be a soldier.”

— Wang Jianlin

“My family background was heavily slanted toward business and seafaring matters.”

— William Standish Knowles

“If you're a Christian, here's the good news: who you really are has nothing to do with you-how much you can accomplish, who you can become, your behavior, your strengths, your weaknesses, your sordid past, your family background, your education, your looks, and so on. Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; His strength, not yours; His performance, not yours; His victory, not yours.”

— Tullian Tchividjian

“I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.”

— Anne Tyler

“Being rich and coming from a distinguished family background doesn't guarantee happiness, Abby. In fact, it might make happiness harder to find because you have to live up to akk that expectation.”

— V.C. Andrews

“I really don't know what makes a comedian. I think it's a family background and environment. Yet if you put the same ingredients in another person, he may never utter a funny line.”

— Bob Newhart

“To play June, I had an immediate connect with her background and culture. We grew up with the same religion and shared a lot of the same values of family and spirituality. But I was really so inspired by what a modern woman she was.”

— Reese Witherspoon

“My family is my biggest critic. Since they come from a non-filmi background, they give me an audience's point of view. They have been very supportive of me.”

— Randeep Hooda

“Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever ... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear.”

— Jhumpa Lahiri

“Further Education should be about the ability to learn, not the ability to pay - everyone who is able should have the opportunity, regardless of their family background. I don't want to see students struggling with huge debts or frightened off even going to university in the first place.”

— Charles Kennedy

“Seriously, I wanted to be an artist because I saw that it meant endless possibilities. I came from a badly managed family background, so art was a way of reinventing myself.”

— Sam Taylor-Wood

“Persons curious in chronology may, if they like, work out from what they already know of the Wimsey family that the action of the book takes place in 1935; but if they do, they must not be querulously indignant because the King's Jubilee is not mentioned, or because I have arranged the weather and the moon's changes to suit my own fancy. For, however realistic the background, the novelist's only native country is Cloud-Cuckooland, where they do but jest, poison in jest: no offence in the world.”

— Dorothy L. Sayers

“I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction.”

— Donald Johanson

“My family making music was like a folk background, really: banging on tabletops, playing banjo and all kinds of things.”

— Dave Davies

“Los Angeles is such a great meritocracy. Where can someone with my background - don't have the right family background, the right religion, the right provenance or whatever you want to call it - I come here and I'm accepted. The city's been good to me. And I want to give back.”

— Eli Broad

“We were a very politically active family. My father was one of the first lawyers in South Africa to have a black partner, so I grew up very aware of the struggle going on. Coming from that background, it really gave me chills to have my music be a part of the election of the first black American president.”

— Trevor Rabin

“Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.”

— Ving Rhames

“As a regent, I hope to bring that important perspective of a typical family visitor in combination with my background as a Member of Congress and a proponent of the Smithsonian's efforts to reach all Americans.”

— Xavier Becerra

“Hers was the kind of family that commissioned painters to immortalize its young: a background utterly alien to Strike, and one he had come to know like a dangerous foreign country.”

— Robert Galbraith

“With my family background - my parents were both activists - writing about culture and politics came naturally.”

— Alexander Chee

“When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.”

— Samuel Alito

“"Joy" is based, albeit loosely, on the life of Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur, inventor and QVC shopping network star with the mega-selling Miracle Mop. Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as Joy, but the film starts off on the wrong foot with woeful depictions of her background as the only sane person in her dysfunctional family.”

— Kenneth Turan

“The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“When I think of my background, if I was privileged on any level, it was in terms of the kind of exposure to experience and bohe-mian cultural influence that my parents and my uncles and my grandfather gave me. On both sides I come from an extremely eccentric, artsy, intellectually intense, activist family.”

— Edward Norton

“I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. [ ... ] I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.”

— Stephen Jay Gould

“You have to set big goals for yourself. And you have to put aside all the negativity in your life that tells you that if you came from a certain education or a certain family background that you can't achieve big goals. That's one of the things that America has.”

— Brian Tracy

“My filmmaking background has really just been making movies with my friends since I was 12 years old. That's how I feel I learned how to tell a story visually, by just going out with a video camera and making movies with my friends and family.”

— Rian Johnson

“Everyone wants to be happy; happiness is a right. And while on a secondary level differences exist of nationality, faith, family background, social status and so on, more important is that on a human level we are the same. None of us wants to face problems, and yet we create them by stressing our differences. If we see each other just as fellow human beings, there'll be no basis for fighting or conflict between us.”

— Dalai Lama

“One Mongolian leader became a very, very brutal dictator and eventually became a murderer. Previously, he was a monk, and then he became a revolutionary. Under the influence of his new ideology, he actually killed his own teacher. Pol Pot's family background was Buddhist. Whether he himself was a Buddhist at a young age, I don't know. Even Chairman Mao's family background was Buddhist. So one day, if the Dalai Lama becomes a mass murderer, he will become the most deadly of mass murderers.”

— Dalai Lama

“If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background ... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, I and my family could have a tragedy.”

— Lee Kuan Yew