that is not an appeal to authority.
The statement alone is sufficient for the argument, bringing in notable and revered historical figures does not improve the merit of his premise. He's saying, "it's in our character because of these notable authority figures". By definition it's an appeal to authority.
Why is this so hard to understand?
(meta-comment, seriously, what's with all the fucking downvotes? has nobody here ever seen a formal argument or a logical fallacy? I don't care if I burn karma for being wrong, but I'm not so what's the deal? If you downvoted and actually typed a response, please disregard my bitching (and yes I know the guidelines say I shouldn't say this kind of thing, but pg's going to have to establish some up/down mod guidelines one of these days, because clearly getting downvoted for making factual statements doesn't make any sense and it appears that this site is slipping again down the HN->reddit->digg->4chan slope again as recent posts about non-hackerish things are demonstrating))