Pedigree Quotes

Pedigree and ancestry and what we ourselves have not achieved, I scarcely recognize as our own. ~ Ovid

The big guys choose who they want to fight and they think about history: 'how many times I defended my title.' They try to break a record: 'how long I was there.' But if you look at the pedigree, who they fought, ain't nobody gonna give them credit for it because they fought a lot of people with no experience. ~ Evander Holyfield

I'm not looking at an action movie as something where I just jump around and look beautiful and show my muscles. Since there are so few people that do this and have that pedigree, people disregard their contribution. ~ Wesley Snipes

Fiction writing was in my blood from a very young age, but I never considered writing as a real career. I thought you had to have some literary pedigree to be a successful author, the son of Hemingway or Fitzgerald. ~ James Rollins

It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world; and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly changing dialects, were to be included, such an arrangement would be the only possible one. Yet it might be that some ancient languages had altered very little and had given rise to few new languages, whilst others had altered much owing to the spreading, isolation, and state of civilisation of the several co-descended races, and had thus given rise to many new dialects and languages. The various degrees of difference between the languages of the same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even the only possible arrangement would still be genealogical; and this would be strictly natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and recent, by the closest affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of each tongue. ~ Charles Darwin

It has always been asked in the spirit of: 'What are the best sources of our knowledge – the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?' I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist – no more than ideal rulers – and that all 'sources' are liable to lead us into errors at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' The question of the sources of our knowledge, like so many authoritarian questions, is a genetic one. It asks for the origin of our knowledge, in the belief that knowledge may legitimize itself by its pedigree. The nobility of the racially pure knowledge, the untainted knowledge, the knowledge which derives from the highest authority, if possible from God: these are the (often unconscious) metaphysical ideas behind the question. My modified question, 'How can we hope to detect error?' may be said to derive from the view that such pure, untainted and certain sources do not exist, and that questions of origin or of purity should not be confounded with questions of validity, or of truth. …. The proper answer to my question 'How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?' is I believe, 'By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and – if we can train ourselves to do so – by criticizing our own theories or guesses.' ~ Karl Popper

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Paul makes it clear enough that it takes more than an Abrahamic pedigree to be a child of God. To be a child of God requires faith in Christ. ~ Martin Luther

I'm not the pedigree kid. I'm not classically trained. I didn't come from the fancy home, no. ~ Kate Winslet

Academic pedigree alone is no guarantor of useful knowledge and wisdom. ~ Robert Samuelson

I am no herald to inquire into men's pedigree; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues. ~ Philip Sidney

Wisdom isn't bound by wealth brackets, status or caste, religion or pedigree. She feeds all who come to her hungry. ~ D.M. Anthony

I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or from a boat in the bay or on the river, and you will see in any section of the view far better paintings than in this lentil soup that you people have to pedigree in order to love. I may be a thief, but I know color when I see it in the flash of heaven or in the Devil's opposing tricks, and I know mud. Mr. Knoedler, you needn't worry about your paintings anymore. I'm not going to steal them. I don't like them.
Sincerely yours,
P. Soames ~ Mark Helprin

Whatever their names or pedigree, snowdrops were something to look forward to - the earliest and bravest of the brave spring bulbs, defying the winter gloom. ~ Margaret Mayhew

It's amazing that schools still offer courses in musical composition. What a useless thing to spend money on -- to take a course in college to learn how to be a modern composer! No matter how good the course is, when you get out, what the fuck will you do for a living? (The easiest thing to do is become a composition teacher yourself, spreading 'the disease' to the next generation.)

One of the things that determines the curriculum in music schools is: which of the current fashions in modern music gets the most grant money from the mysterious benefactors in Foundation-Land. For a while there, unless you were doing serial music (in which the pitches have numbers, the dynamics have numbers, the vertical densities have numbers, etc) -- if it didn't have a pedigree like that, it wasn't a good piece of music. Critics and academicians stood by, waiting to tell you what a piece of shit your opus was if your numbers didn't add up. (Forget what it sounded like, or whether it moved anybody, or what it was about. The most important thing was the numbers. ~ Frank Zappa

The pedigree's pretty high. For people who are really scary movie fans, this is nirvana. If you're in the mood to get scared, just watch this every week. It'll creep you out. ~ John Landis

Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality. ~ Charles Darwin

I believe that in this life, we are defined not by the station in life into which we are born, nor by our pedigree, race, or religion, but by the choices we make. ~ Robin McGraw

Languages are the pedigree of nations. ~ Samuel Johnson

The Bangles are proof that short skirts and electric guitars go hand-in-hand. They are one of the great all-girl groups, backing up their looks with a serious pop-rock pedigree. ~ Shawn Amos

I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess! ~ Audrey Hepburn

Williams is one of the big names in F1 with a really strong pedigree, so it is an honour to be driving for them. ~ Pastor Maldonado

Most of the stories I read are about my Hollywood pedigree. ~ Michael Douglas

Watching baseball under the lights is like observing dogs indoors, at a pedigree show. In both instances, the environment is too controlled to suit the species. ~ Melvin Maddocks

Despite his NFL pedigree, Clay Matthews had to fight every step of the way to get to the NFL. Once there, he's had a unique appreciation of what it took to succeed. ~ Hannah Storm

Huh! It is only a pahari," said Kim over his shoulder. "Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?"
The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim's pedigree for three generations. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Sovereign money procures a wife with a large fortune, gets a man credit, creates friends, stands in place of pedigree, and even of beauty. ~ Horace

Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan succeeded to a long pedigree and a short rent-roll, like many lairds of that period. ~ Walter Scott

We've had a problem finding a vocalist. We have not been lucky yet to find the one. I think the problem is that the three of us have such a pedigree of vocalist, that if we come out with someone that's not good we'll obviously be slated! ~ Peter Hook

A German or a Russian mamaloschen (mother tongue) pedigree made for two wildly different translations of the same verse by the American Yiddish poet H. Leyvik.

"Dos turemdike lebn in der turemdike shtot", translated "The towering life of the towering city" (Yiddish turem, "tower," of German origin) became in another version "The imprisoned life of the prison city" (via turme, "prison", from Russian).

I discovered this old "plot" in a recent lecture, a volume on American Yiddish Poetry, by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. One of those gentle epiphanies that only apparently obscure footnotes or references could reveal.

In a frivolous gesture, I concocted an improbable rendition based on both translations, a slice of contemporary universal metropolitan spleen:

The imprisoned life of the towering city. ~ Harshav

I can't impress people with the pedigree of obscure French filmmakers that got me into film. It was Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I really thought I wanted to make dumb action movies. ~ Doug Liman

Others may question your credentials, your papers, your degrees. Others may look for all kinds of ways to diminish your worth. But what is inside you no one can take from you or tarnish. This is your worth, who you really are, your degree that can go with you wherever you go, that you bring with you the moment you come into a room, that can't be manipulated or shaken. Without that sense of self, no amount of paper, no pedigree, and no credentials can make you legit. No matter what, you have to feel legit inside first. ~ Chris Gardner

I'd rather have an inch of a dog than miles of pedigree. ~ Dana Burnet

pedigree whose odor even the forest of air-freshener trees he'd hung from the mirror couldn't mask. ~ Ransom Riggs

Every schoolchild knows that Columbus set out across the sea to prove that the world was round. But the belief in a spherical earth had a long and illustrious pedigree, as Columbus himself was well aware ... "The second reason that inspired the Admiral [Columbus] to launch his enterprise and helped justify his giving the name 'Indies' to the lands which he discovered was the authority of many learned men who said that one could sail westward from the western end of Africa and Spain to the eastern end of India, and that no great sea lay between." ~ Ferdinand Columbus

We must, if we are to be consistent, and if we re to have a real pedigree herd, mate the best of our men with the best of our women as often as possible, and the inferior men with the inferior women as seldom as possible, and keep only the offspring of the best. ~ Plato

Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation out of the mines Officer Starling. ~ Thomas Harris

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio. ~ Rita Coolidge

Of what avail are pedigrees? ~ Juvenal

What else matters but pedigree and rumor, my lord? Those things make the world go around. ~ Jess Michaels

My intention with The Soup was to hopefully follow in the footsteps of past hosts, like Greg Kinnear. The pedigree of that show was really good and if it could just get me into some of those audition rooms I've always wanted to get into that I could not get into, then I would be very happy. ~ Joel McHale

Without a doubt, Robert Rodriguez is the reason I was drawn to it. The fact that he even knew who I was and then was interested in me for the role was amazing. I am a huge fan of his and it's like a bucket list thing for me to be able to work with him and knowing that Jessica Alba and Jeremy Piven were in it I knew that part was going to be good and as you said, the pedigree of the series was great, so it was really one of those things I couldn'tresist. ~ Joel McHale

The information highway is being sold to us as delivering information, but what it's really delivering is data ... Unlike data, information has utility, timeliness, accuracy, a pedigree ... Editors serve as barometers of quality, and most of an editor's time is spent saying no. ~ Clifford Stoll

If you need to invoke your academic pedigree or job title for people to believe what you say, then you need a better argument. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The nobility of England would have snored through the Sermon on the Mount. But you'll labor like scholars over a bulldogs pedigree. ~ Robert Bolt

Say not that thou hast royal blood in thy veins; say not that thou art born of God if thou canst not prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy! ~ William Gurnall

No, it's very comforting actually, to know that you're sitting in a long legacy of actresses who've played the role. I'm absolutely all for absorbing all of those influences, so you understand the pedigree of the part as much as you understand the figure in history ... because you are playing the part. You don't say: "Gosh, I want to play Peter Sellers ... " because you can sort of do that in your own bathroom. ~ Cate Blanchett

It is valour which defines a kshatriya, a kshatriya does not define valour. You are known by the deeds done; merit has no pedigree. ~ Kavita Kane

14th- and 15th-century drawings are almost unheard-of - and as a result, they generate jealous desire among dealers and curators. Museums in particular value rarity and pedigree more than attractiveness. ~ Peter Landesman

It doesn't matter what your pedigree is, who your family is or what degrees you have. What really matters is how you perform your job and how you produce results. Whoever could do the best job, that's who the focus is on - and it definitely doesn't matter if I am a woman or a man. ~ Gracia Martore

NO DIVINE BOVINE ! The clumsy creature currently inhabiting the White House is a distinctly dangerous animal. Part boneheaded raging bully, part dastardly coward showing signs of advanced stage mad cow disease. Neither of good pedigree nor useful breeding stock, there is essentially very little of substance between the T (bone) and the RUMP, except of course for an abundance of methane and bullshit. It's high time brave matadors for you to enter the bullring, with nimble step and fleet of foot. Take good aim and bring down this marauding beast once and for all. Slay public enemy number one and we will salute you forever. A louder cheer you will not hear from Madrid to Mexico City, from Beijing to Brussels, from London to Lahore, from Toronto to Tehran and ten thousand cities in between. ~ Alex Morritt

More knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral. ~ Samuel Johnson

It's not whiteness itself that sets Them against Us, but the worship of whiteness. Same goes if you swap whiteness out for other things
fancy possessions for sure, pedigree, maybe youth too ... we beat Them (and spare ourselves a lot of tedium and terror) by declining to worship. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I came from a very different sort of background and pedigree from the people who were on "The Daily Show". I was an actor. I was sort of - the irony is that I've done as much dramatic work in my career as comedic work and I don't really think of myself as a comedian. ~ Aasif Mandvi

To be the governor of the Bank of England in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was therefore not a mark of any particular merit, but merely a sign of the right pedigree, patience, longevity, and the luxury of having a sufficiently profitable business with partners willing to let one take four years' leave. ~ Liaquat Ahamed

Every label thinks, when they sign someone, 'This is the perfect pedigree to sign. They're cute, they can sing, they can dance, et cetera.' And they say to the public, 'Here, this is what you're gonna like.' But you might say, 'No, I don't like that!' You'll probably say 'no' many more times than you'll say 'yes!' ~ Randy Jackson

I know what my job is, and I'm damned good at it."

When he snorted she came back down two steps. She came down slowly, her movements deliberate, because her own temper was much too close to the boil. "Good enough to have figured out why you've hated the sight of me since I first walked in that door. Since you understood Roarke had feelings for me. Part A was easy -- a first-year rookie could have snagged onto it. I'm a cop, and that's enough for you to hold me in contempt."

He offered a thin smile. "I've had little reason to admire those in your profession."

"Part B was tougher." She came down another step so that their eyes were level. "I thought I had that figured, too, but I didn't realize that Part B had a couple of stages. Stage one: I'm not one of the glamorous, well-bred stunners that Roarke socialized with. I haven't got the looks or the pedigree or the style to suit you."

He felt a quick tug of shame, but inclined his head. "No, you don't. He could have had anyone, his pick of the cream of society."

"But you didn't want just anyone for him, Summerset. That's stage two, and I just figured that out this morning. You resent me because I'm not Marlena. That's who you wanted for him," she said quietly as the color slipped out of his cheeks. "You hoped he'd find someone who reminded you of her, instead you got stuck with an inferior mode. Tough luck all around. ~ J.D. Robb

Unfairness – this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damm lucky by Indian standards. Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok. I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your spark ~ Chetan Bhagat

Passion, not pedigree, will win in the end. ~ Jon Bon Jovi

Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained
a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas. ~ Chauncey Wright

It is a great deal easier for a man to find a pedigree to fit his virtues than virtues to fit his pedigree. ~ Josh Billings

Pedigree matters: if you break your shoulder trying to open a door, it's much harder to play the game once you get in the room. ~ Audra McDonald

The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it. ~ James Russell Lowell

Nationalism of the Irish type is often regarded as reactionary. With the World Revolution and the Classless Society waiting for the midwife, why take a torch to the stable to assist at the birth of a puppy? Even if the puppy is pedigree. On this question I am unable to make up my mind. ~ Louis MacNeice

What find you better or more honourable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything, in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree. ~ Shackerley Marmion

So far from a political ideology being the quasi-divine parent of political activity, it turns out to be its earthly stepchild. Instead of an independently premeditated scheme of ends to be pursued, it is a system of ideas abstracted from the manner in which people have been accustomed to go about the business of attending to the arrangements of their societies. The pedigree of every political ideology shows it to be the creature, not of premeditation in advance of political activity, but of meditation upon a manner of politics. In short, political activity comes first and a political ideology follows after; and the understanding of politics we are investigating has the disadvantage of being, in the strict sense, preposterous.
Let us consider the matter first in relation to scientific hypothesis, which I have taken to play a role in scientific activity in some respects similar to that of an ideology in politics. If a scientific hypothesis were a self-generated bright idea which owed nothing to scientific activity, then empiricism governed by hypothesis could be considered to compose a self-contained manner of activity; but this certainly is not its character. The truth is that only a man who is already a scientist can formulate a scientific hypothesis; that is, an hypothesis is not an independent invention capable of guiding scientific inquiry, but a dependent supposition which arises as an abstraction from within already existing scientific activity. Moreover, even when ~ Michael Oakeshott

TRINA:
I'm tired of all the happy men who rule the world.
Their smile, their smile's their pedigree. They smile, but not for me.
I'd like the chance to hide
In their world.
I'm happy, but I'm not at ease with that whole world. ~ William Finn

George Bush ran a campaign where he bragged about being an anti-intellectual, dismissing his Harvard and Yale pedigree, pretending he was an American every day, ordinary everyman, and as a result of that, played up his fumbling speech because it signified that he was a good guy. That is deeply and profoundly anti-intellectual. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

It is as if Clinton had called one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to testify that the primal urge has a most distinguished presidential pedigree. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931 the Japanese army staged mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimise its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullius ('nobody's land'), which effectively erased 50,000 years of Aboriginal history.
In the early twentieth century a favourite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of 'a people without a land [the Jews] to a land without a people [Palestine]'. The existence of the local Arab population was conveniently ignored. In 1969 Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously said that there is no Palestinian people and never was. Such views are very common in Israel even today, despite decades of armed conflicts against something that doesn't exist. For example, in February 2016 MP Anat Berko gave a speech in the Israeli Parliament in which she doubted the reality and history of the Palestinian people. Her proof? The letter 'p' does not even exist in Arabic, so how can there be a Palestinian people? (In Arabic, 'f' stands for 'p', and the Arabic name for Palestine is Falastin.) ~ Yuval Noah Harari

If ever you are tempted to become discouraged or to lose faith, remember those faithful Saints who remained true in Kirtland. Hold on a little longer. You can do this! You are part of a special generation. You were prepared and preserved to live at this important time in the existence of our beautiful planet earth. You have a celestial pedigree and therefore have all the necessary talents to make your life an eternal success story. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

It's not your blue blood, your pedigree or your college degree. It's what you do with your life that counts. ~ Millard Fuller