Kent Nerburn Quotes

We've got to know our history. We have to be able to bring our children to a place that they can be proud of.

Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.

You can't build a future if you don't have a past.

I always had my roots in the past.

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

Of course, we carry inside of ourselves our parents. Even when they are dead, we carry them inside ourselves. And they are carrying inside themselves their dead parents and so on and so forth. There is a legacy of language and culture and religion. In some cases, family stories told by grandparents to little grandchildren. When I say my novels are set in Israel in the last seventy years, this entails the fact that they begin hundreds or thousands of years earlier in time. Everybody comes from somewhere.

But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family. I forgot the songs they sung - and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue; I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now - yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life.

I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don't know your history, if you don't know your family, who are you?

I think the history and the past we have is just an energy we've built up to do what we do now.

In my view, you can't go to the future if you haven't come from the past.

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

We all belong to an ancient identity. Stories are the rivers that take us there.

You want to try to find your heritage.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

A good story never dies.

People will not look forward to posterity who are not anxious to look backward to their ancestry

It is of the essence of traditions that they cover or conceal their humble foundations by erecting impressive edifices on them.

I stand by 'Roots' as symbol of the fate of my people.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

We should not ignore or isolate our roots, no matter where we stay.

Let's treasure our roots, even when we're far away.

It's good to know where you've come from.