304 Tradition Quotes

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past.

The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof.

When you move artistically, the natural inclination is to denounce everything that's gone before.

Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.

The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative.

Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry; this occurs repeatedly, again and again; finally it can be reckoned upon beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.

Precedents deliberately established by wise men are entitled to great weight. They are evidence of truth, but only evidence...But a solitary precedent...which has never been reexamined, cannot be conclusive.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

I felt there's a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I'd be a jerk not to take advantage of it.

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: 'We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.'

The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them at Inanda's Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten. It was the fashion of our forefathers.

How to save the old that's worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, manners, institutions, or human types, is one of our greatest problems, and the one that we bother least about.

And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale.

To be modern only means to fill new forms with eternal truths.

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

The judge's authority depends upon the assumption that he speaks with the mouth of others. That is to say, the momentum of his utterances must be greater than any which his personal reputation and character can command, if it is to do the work assigned to it - if it is to stand against the passionate resentments arising out of the interests he must frustrate - for while a judge must discover some composition with the dominant trends of his times, he must preserve his authority by cloaking himself in the majesty of an overshadowing past.

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.

Hinduism is a living organism. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. Knowledge is limitless and so also the application of truth. Everyday we add to our knowledge of the power of Atman (soul) and we shall keep on doing so.

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.

The two parties which divide the State, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made ... Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities ... Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.

Religion is partly fundamental & immutable partly circumstantial & mutable. The first was the Religion of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham Moses Christ & all the saints & consists of two parts our duty towards God & our duty towards man or piety & righteousness, piety which I will here call Godliness & Humanity.

Variant: I prefer to tack the canvas to the floor... I can walk around work from the four sides and literally be in the painting... this is akin to the method of the Indians and painters of the West.

'Now to be endorsed unanimously to the Senate by the Great Council of Chiefs has been a crowning finale for me ... This last act of endorsement and certification by the august body of Chiefs ratifies and stamps once and for all for me my Fijianness and dispels any questions of my right to be considered an indigene.'

I want to say to the young people, Honor thy father and thy mother. Your days will be longer and more fruitful.

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10 000 years ago.

After we started dating I worked a long, long day and night, and I came home, back to my apartment in Paris, at three or four in the morning. Vanessa was there, and she was cooking for me. That's not to say that a woman must cook for a man, that's not what I'm saying, but it took me by surprise. It was a whole new ball game for me. I'd never experienced that before. It was like she was a woman not afraid to be a woman. I hope that doesn't sound weird or sexist, because it's not. I'm totally in agreement that women are the stronger, smarter, more evolved sex. (2004)

It would be a shame to ruin her last name [by getting married]. It's so perfect - Vanessa Paradis. So beautiful. It would be such a drag to stick her with Paradis-Depp. It's like a flat note. (2004)

Estranha gente, para quem e fora de duvida que ninguem pode ser moral sem ler a Biblia, ser forte sem jogar o criquete e ser gentlemun sem ser ingles! E e isto que os torna detestados. Nunca se fundem, nunca se desinglesam.

Tell her I'll sing if she christens a ship first...

'[The Indian princes'] ceremonies are so irritating and ridiculous' (Ziegler, King Edward VIII, 116)

It had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage, - not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air - but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad.

It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history - free culture. If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.

We Americans have a long history of fighting 'big,' wisely or not. That we could be motivated to fight 'big' again is not something new. It would be something new, and something very important, if an equal number could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built within the idea of 'intellectual property.' Not because balance is alien to our tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But because the muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called 'property' is not well exercised within this tradition anymore. If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place of our tragedy.

Mother Goose is on the loose, stealing lines from Lenny Bruce.

There's a big difference between education and knowledge. The moment that we don't invest in educating Jewish children according to the roots that were the basis of our education for thousands of years, we are knowledge-givers rather than educators.

We both came from families in which parents got married, had children and the whole thing. So we were not the kind of people to live together permanently.

'My own people condemned my action (performing Koothu and Kutiyattam outside the precincts of the temples), Once, after I had given performances at Vaikkom, they even thought about excommunicating me. I desired that this art should survive the test of time. That was precisely why I ventured outside the temple' - Guru about the difficulties he had faced from hardliners when he tok Koothu and Kutiyattam outside the temples and performing it for common man.[2]

'Mani Madhava Chakyar was the personification of all the greatness of this rich Indian classical art tradition' - Kapila Vatsyayan (leading scholar of classical Indian dance)[5]

'for 90 years' - On asking how much years he had studied Kutiyattam. He was 90 years then.

I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox-the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.

Tantra accepts everything, lives everything. That's why tantra never could become a very accepted ideology. It always remained a fringe ideology.

The village of Market Blandings is one of those sleepy hamlets which modern progress has failed to touch... The church is Norman, and the intelligence of the majority of the natives palaeozoic.

Nannie Bruce, a tall, gangling light-heavyweight with a suggestion in her appearance of a private in the Grenadiers dressed up to play the title role in Charley's Aunt, was one of those doggedly faithful retainers who adhere to almost all old families like barnacles to the hulls of ships...She was as much a fixture as the stone lions or the funny smell in the attic.

He kicks against tradition and restrictions without realising that tradition made him, is his raison d'etre.

The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is 'wrong' and arises from insular ignorance.

'The process of electing members of Parliament to represent the people is at the heart of western democracy. Fiji courts are also part of an independent judicial system which is firmly rooted in western democracy. The basic civil lesson that our children learn in school is that democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people ... Mr Qarase should answer whether he wants the western system of governance which allows him to be prime minister or the Fijian tradition which requires the chiefs to rule by virtue of their birthright and rank. Otherwise, he is just being hypocritical to save face.' (4 September 2005, reacting to a speech made by Qarase at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association on 29 August, claiming that democracy was alien to Fiji).

'In any case paramount traditional heads of provinces should, in my view, welcome the fact that their people who have had education and experience can relieve them as in the traditional line of delegation from the many functions the chiefs are required to do now, particularly if they are public servants or have not had the background of education and service as their people.'

'Likewise to our Indian brothers and sisters, it's your duty to respect one another and value cultural differences and traditions.'

He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbours.'

How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death?

Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought. Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.

Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume. So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged.

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.

Love is natural. Back of all ceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world's history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love. Long before a ceremony was thought of, long before a priest existed, there were true and perfect marriages. Back of public opinion is natural modesty, the affections of the heart; and in spite of all law, there is and forever will be the realm of choice. Wherever love is, it is pure; and everywhere, and at all times, the ceremony of marriage testifies to that which has happened within the temple of the human heart.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And every single one of them is right!

In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

O! what's a table richly spread Without a woman at its head!

The frontier had ceased to exist. And the religions it had bred were beginning slowly to die. In the old days, when men, often of little education, had needed only to declare themselves ministers, people would have seen themselves reflected in the expounders of the Word. This quality of homespun would have made the religions appear creations of a community, personal and close and inviolable. Now a certain distance was needed.

Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.

If you ask your mother whether she knew about Peter Pan when she was a little girl she will say, 'Why, of course, I did, child,' and if you ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days she will say, 'What a foolish question to ask; certainly he did.' Then if you ask your grandmother whether she knew about Peter Pan when she was a girl, she also says, 'Why, of course, I did, child,' but if you ask her whether he rode on a goat in those days, she says she never heard of his having a goat. Perhaps she has forgotten, just as she sometimes forgets your name and calls you Mildred, which is your mother's name. Still, she could hardly forget such an important thing as the goat. Therefore there was no goat when your grandmother was a little girl. This shows that, in telling the story of Peter Pan, to begin with the goat (as most people do) is as silly as to put on your jacket before your vest. Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he is really always the same age, so that does not matter in the least.

Christian Henry Tobler, Secrets of German Medieval Swordsmanship (2001), ISBN 1-891448-07-2

The moment you ask a child in Israel what Yom Kippur means to him, and he answers the Yom Kippur War, or a fun day on a bicycle - then I don't know if that is Zionism or whatever you call it, but it has certainly become bankrupt

He seems to me like the last, best example of a tradition that had already started to vanish long before his death - the tradition of Martha Gellhorn and Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite, people who went and found out what was really happening before they started to talk about it. ~ John Simpson, BBC world affairs editor

Whoever attacks a custom or a creed, will be confronted with a list of the names of the dead who upheld the custom, or believed the creed. He is asked in a very triumphant and sneering way, if he knows more than all the great and honored of the past. Every defender of a creed has graven upon his memory the names of all 'great' men whose actions or words can be tortured into evidence for his doctrine

The boys, who cannot grow up to adult human nature, are beating the prophets of the ancient race - Marx, Freud, Einstein - who have been tearing at our social, personal and intellectual roots, tearing with an objectivity which to the healthy animal seems morbid, depriving everything, as it seems, of the warmth of natural feeling. What traditional retort have the schoolboys but a kick in the pants? ... To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol - a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in heart and cheerful of spirit. Himself a schoolboy, too, but the other kind - with ruffled hair, soft hands and a violin. See him as he squats on Cromer beach doing sums, Charlie Chaplin with the brow of Shakespeare... So it is not an accident that the Nazi lads vent a particular fury against him. He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast - intellectualist, individualist, supernationalist, pacifist, inky, plump... How should they know the glory of the free-ranging intellect and soft objective sympathy to whom money and violence, drink and blood and pomp, mean absolutely nothing? Yet Albert and the blond beast make up the world between them. If either cast the other out, life is diminished in its force. When the barbarians destroy the ancient race as witches, when they refuse to scale heaven on broomsticks, they may be dooming themselves to sink back into the clods which bore them.

...in our tradition there is a saying that what is a Jewish sport? And the saying is,