The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.

Some of us don't want to admit to it, but we are a lot like our parents. The way that we are in our own personal relationships is very similar to how we grew up. And whether that's positive and negative, it's definitely something to be aware of.

Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses … yet we are all children of the same Judaic-Christian civilization, with much the same religious background basically.

This may be the curse of human race . Not that we are different from one anther , but we are so alike .

The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.

If our ancestors could see us today, surely they would think us gods.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

The ancestors are generally only a caricature of the contemporaries, and the descendants a caricature of the ancestors. p. 127

It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent.

Often the children went alone, or held the hands of strangers. Sometimes parents saw them pass and did not dare call out their names. And they went, of course, not for anything they had done or said. But because their parents existed before them. The crime of being one's children.

It is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are unequal in all their relations with the things of this world, without exception. The only thing that is identical in all men is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world. All human beings are absolutely identical in so far as they can be thought of as consisting of a centre, which is an unquenchable desire for good, surrounded by an accretion of psychical and bodily matter.

We are so different, yet so much the same.

We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.