Tradition Quotes - Page 2

• I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Complaining, Nineteenth Century

  The Observer, November 26, 1989.

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• Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other-only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.

  Talcott Parsons

  Health, Science, Support

  1951 The Social System, ch.8.

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• Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.

  Walter Lippmann

  Records, Machines, Imitation

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• It's true, Christmas can feel like a lot of work, particularly for mothers. But when you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you'll find you've created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul.

  Caroline Kennedy

  Christmas, Mother, Memories

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• We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today.

  Henry Ford

  Life, History, Live In The Moment

  Chicago Tribune 25 May 1916 (interview with Charles N. Wheeler)

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• To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a mummified form.

  Alfred Jarry

  Mean, Ideas, Mad

  Katharine Noel, Alfred Jarry (2007). “Selected works of Alfred Jarry”, Grove Pr

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• I'm an old-fashioned guy... I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something.

  Johnny Depp

  Beer, Men, Lakes

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Tradition is the illusion of permanance.

  Woody Allen

  Illusion

  Woody Allen, Robert E. Kapsis, Kathie Coblentz (2006). “Woody Allen: Interviews”, p.178, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.

  Douglas Adams

  Courage, Strong, Wings

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• Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.

  Dave Barry

  Christmas, Wise, Stars

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry's Greatest Hits”, p.79, Ballantine Books

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• But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and concerts, to see how we can connect with each other in music.

  Yo-Yo Ma

  Ideas, Innovation, Together

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• The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps.

  Alexander Vandegrift

  Military, Marine, Usmc

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• They (Women Marines) don't have a nickname, and they don't need one. They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere, at a Marine Post. They inherit the traditions of the Marines. They are Marines.

  Thomas Holcomb

  Military, Marine, Atmosphere

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• Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Mind, Culture, Spirit

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1963). “Jawaharlal Nehru's Speeches”

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• I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

  Claude Debussy

  Trying, Music Love, I Love Music

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• There ought to be three traditions in the art of humanity: the realistic, the visionary and the wild.

  Ben Okri

  Art, Humanity, Three

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• Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Paradox, Radical

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.251, University of Chicago Press

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• A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.

  Ben Shahn

  Art, Numbers, Quality

  Ben Shahn (1957). “The Shape of Content”, p.101, Harvard University Press

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• I'd rather be at the end of a dying tradition, which I admire, than at the beginning of a tradition which I deplore.

  Margaret Drabble

  Dying, Ends, Admire

  Margaret Drabble, Fumi Takano, Yūko Tsushima (1991). “Margaret Drabble in Tokyo”

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• Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Philosophy, Thinking, Revelations

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.7, Harvard University Press

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• Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  New York, Mean, Years

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• Tradition is a prop for social security.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Social, Props, Security

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• The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Plato, Philosophical, Knowledge

  Process and Reality pt. 2, ch. 1 (1929)

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

  Herman Wouk

  Jewish Tradition, Inheritance, Wealth

  Time Magazine, September 05, 1955.

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• What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.

  Andy Warhol

  Country, Artist, Commercial Art

  Andy Warhol, Annette Michelson, B. H. D. Buchloh (2001). “Andy Warhol”, p.86, MIT Press

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