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Tradition Quotes
"That's why we're doing this, to defend our traditions a little. I don't have anything against it (Halloween), but it's not our tradition."
28
"The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement."
17
"Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can't even describe, aren't even aware of."
16
"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."
16
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
15
"If I have smashed the traditions, it was because I knew no traditions."
13
"Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting."
13
"Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead."
12
"I think it's a Blondie tradition that all of our albums sort of have a wide spread of styles."
10
"I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years."
10
"Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build."
9
"I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go."
9
"In the villages in Europe, there are still healers who tell stories."
9
"It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed--the two bridemaids were duly inferior--her father gave her away--her mother stood with salts in her hand expecting to be agitated--her aunt tried to cry-- and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant."
8
"It seems there's confusion at this time of yearregarding the reason for Christmas.From shopping for presents to spreading good cheer,the world makes an overly huge fuss.But Christmas is not for the gifts we exchange.It's not about sleigh rides or sweet candy canes.Nay, Christmas is simple. A time to recallChrist's gift of atonement He gave to us all."
7
"There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair."
7
"The turkey has a destiny which ends on San Martino's day."
7
"It is often said by the critics of Christian origins that certain ritual feasts, processions or dances are really of pagan origin. They might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin. Nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was Christian; and no Church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced, either in a pilgrimage or a ballet. What can really be maintained, so as to carry not a little conviction, is this: that where such a Church has existed it has preserved not only the processions but the dances; not only the cathedral but the carnival. One of the chief claims of Christian civilisation is to have preserved things of pagan origin."
6
"I respect traditional people - they have the eyes which see value in the tarnished. This is a gift in itself. Tradition requires a wealth of discipline in order to be adhered to, hence it is rarely found in youth."
6
"We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist."
6
"For I who hold sage Homer's rule the best Welcome the coming speed the going guest."
6
"Virtually every tribe in the march towards civilization developed its tailored made initiation practices. In America, sports are part of the test for a young man's initiation into manhood."
6
"Recent generations seem to consider 'old-fashioned' thinking as out-dated and without place in the modern world. I beg to differ. After all, who has greater faith? He who looks to and learns from the past, or the man who cares not for consequence?"
5
"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."
5
"God bless the lawn mower, he thought. Who was the fool who made January first New Year's Day? No, they should set a man to watch the grasses across a million Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa lawns, and on that morning when it was long enough for cutting, instead of ratchets and horns and yelling, there should be a great swelling symphony of lawn mowers reaping fresh grass upon the prairie lands. Instead of confetti and serpentine, people should throw grass spray at each other on the one day each year that really represents Beginning!"
4
"(in response to the question: what do you think of e-books and Amazon's Kindle?) Those aren't books. You can't hold a computer in your hand like you can a book. A computer does not smell. There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new, it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. A book has got to smell. You have to hold it in your hands and pray to it. You put it in your pocket and you walk with it. And it stays with you forever. But the computer doesn't do that for you. I'm sorry."
4
"Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their youth...fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober."
4
"Odd that a festival to celebrate the most austere of births should end up being all about conspicuous consumption."
4
"Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas."
4
"What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives."
3
"Those that cannot produce ideas often speak with the old proverbs!"
3
"If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed."
3
"The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race's knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation."
3
"Light a campfire and everyone's a storyteller."
3
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