quotations about tradition
Tradition is a great resistant force and the inertia of history. Yet because it is only negative, it must be destroyed.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Selections of K. Marx and F. Engels
What an enormous camera-obscura magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory, in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it; and in the darkness, in the entire ignorance, without date or document, no book, no Arundel marble, only here and there some dumb monumental cairn!
THOMAS CARLYLE
"Lectures on Heroes", Sartor Resartus
Take "tradition" out of the equation. Tradition is a human idea too, and traditions change to fit our societal needs.
MATT ST. GERMAIN-DONNELLY
"Marriage is Marriage", The Good Men Project, May 6, 2017
It is of the essence of traditions that they cover or conceal their humble foundations by erecting impressive edifices on them.
LEO STRAUSS
Natural Right and History
Progressives -- and most Canadian law professors would, I think, self-identify at that end of the spectrum -- tend not to be big fans of tradition and ceremony. To them, tradition is at best something appropriate for sending up in Rumpole of the Bailey or a Monty Python sketch. At worst, it serves as a cloak for the perpetuation of oppression and injustice. In this view, tradition is antithetical to social change, and social change is the lynchpin of progress. So, what we need to do is strip the system of its old-fashioned clothing as one step on the path to modernization and social justice.
IAN HOLLOWAY
"Tradition in form, change in substance", Canadian Lawyer Magazine, May 8, 2017
Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.
JAROSLAV PELIKAN
The Vindication of Tradition: The 1982 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities
Old traditions are timeless; the melodies of our roots can resonate deeply as they travel through the years.
MARCOS HASSAN
"Pol Nada's New EP is an Eerie Journey Into Argentina's Entre Ríos Jungle", Remezcla, May 10, 2017
Right now, I think the most basic lesson is the need for discernment in our approach to tradition. There is no substitute for it. We have to know what we have to change so we can conserve what is essential. This is hard.
ROD DREHER
"The Paradox Of Tradition In The Modern World", The American Conservative, May 16, 2017
Take the notion of tradition: it is intended to give a special temporal status to a group of phenomena that are both successive and identical (or at least similar); it makes it possible to rethink the dispersion of history in the form of the same; it allows a reduction of the difference proper to every beginning, in order to pursue without discontinuity the endless search for origin.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
The Archeology of Knowledge
Who must know the way to make a proper home,
A quiet home, a kosher home?
Who must raise the family and run the home,
So Papa's free to read the holy books?
The Mama, the Mama! Tradition!
SHELDON HARNICK
Fiddler on the Roof
Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Virginibus Puerisque
Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions.
THICH NHAT HANH
Living Buddha, Living Christ
Tradition, thou art for suckling children,
Thou art the enlivening milk for babes;
But no meat for men is in thee.
STEPHEN CRANE
The Black Riders and Other Lines
A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech, November 29, 1944
Tradition is a fine thing. Nothing comes out of the blue, except perhaps thunderbolts and they are not really very useful things.
STACY AUMONIER
preface, The Golden Windmill and Other Stories
Family traditions are important because they give you a source of identity, teach values, strengthen the family bond and add to the rhythm of life.
TAYLOR WELSH
"Keeping family traditions alive", Picayune Item, May 4, 2017
Tradition has a richness to it, and a diversity that is overlooked not only by its opponents, but even more by its chief defenders. It is an ongoing, centuries-long conversation with the world about the great, perennial moral and political questions.
CHARLES J. REID
"A Recovery Plan For the Catholic Church", Huffington Post, April 29, 2017
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Partial View
No human being is so hide-bound by custom and tradition as your democratic savage; in no state of society consequently is progress so slow and difficult. The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron. What they did is the pattern of right, the unwritten law to which he yields a blind unquestioning obedience.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
Those who feel guilty contemplating "betraying" the tradition they love by acknowledging their disapproval of elements within it should reflect on the fact that the very tradition to which they are so loyal--the "eternal" tradition introduced to them in their youth--is in fact the evolved product of many adjustments firmly but delicately made by earlier lovers of the same tradition.
DANIEL C. DENNETT
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon