"A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves."

Next Quote

I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.

— Edmund Burke