Tradition Quotes - Page 20

• To speak seriously: the standards of "goodness" which are generally recognized by public opinion are not those which are calculated to make the world a happier place. This is due to a variety of causes, of which the chief is tradition, and the next most powerful is the unjust power of dominant classes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Powerful, Class, World

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.97, Psychology Press

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• Tradition - one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.

  Warren Ellis

  Thinking, People, Use

  "How To Nail That Wedding Speech" by Edie Lush, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk. September 06, 2016.

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• Adam hid in the Garden of Eden. Moses tried to substitute his brother. Jonah jumped a boat and was swallowed by a whale...Man likes to run from God. It's a tradition.

  Mitch Albom

  Running, Brother, Men

  Mitch Albom (2009). “Have a Little Faith: A True Story”, Hyperion

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• Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue - my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Writing, Speak English, Voice

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• Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.

  Daniel Handler

  Mean, Years, Gold

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• It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.

  Terry Pratchett

  Military, Long, Bonus

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Jingo: (Discworld Novel 21)”, p.254, Random House

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• I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.

  Amy Hempel

  Lying, Mean, Thinking

  Amy Hempel (2006). “The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel”, p.233, Simon and Schuster

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• Come on, Forney.' Novalee, it's a parasite.' But it's a tradition.' It's a parasite! And you expect people yo stand under it and kiss?' Yes! it's what people do with mistletoe.

  Billie Letts

  Kissing, People, Mistletoe

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• The flux of life is pouring its aesthetic aspect into your eyes, your ears - and you ignore it because you are looking for your canons of beauty in some sort of frame or glass case or tradition.

  Mina Loy

  Eye, Glasses, Pouring

  Mina Loy, Maeera Shreiber, Keith Tuma (1998). “Mina Loy: woman and poet”, Natl Poetry Foundation

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• The whole bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man. God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relationship at all. No real relationship goes just one way. There are always two active parties. We must have reverence and awe for God, and honor for the chain of tradition. But that doesn't mean we can't use new information to help us read the holy texts in new ways.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Real, Party, Mean

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• Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I dont want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to und3erstand how people answered that question and the question each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.

  John Green

  Alaska, Way In Life, People

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• It was very bad if the council had resorted to recruiting men. By tradition men were our last line of defence, their physical strength bent towards the single and most important task of protecting our homes and children. This meant the council had decided that our only defence was to defeat the enemy, period. Anything else meant the end of Darre.

  N.K. Jemisin

  Children, Home, Men

  N. K. Jemisin (2010). “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms”, p.136, Hachette UK

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• So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sea, Solitude

  Virginia Woolf (1981). “Mrs. Dalloway”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the 'standpoint of art' can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Religious, Art, Giving

  "Truth and Method". Book by Hans-Georg Gadamer (p. 76), 1960.

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• As never before, he understood the vitality of tradition, the dignity of the worship of what had existed before one's own self had come into being. There was no shame in awe; there was exaltation. (“Cafe Endless: Spring Rain”)

  Nancy Holder

  Spring, Rain, Self

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• The application of force alone, without support based on a spiritual concept, can never bring about the destruction of an idea or arrest the propagation of it, unless one is ready and able to ruthlessly to exterminate the last upholders of that idea even to a man, and also wipe out any tradition which it may tend to leave behind.

  Adolf Hitler

  Spiritual, Men, Ideas

  Adolf Hitler, General Press (2016). “Mein Kampf: (My Struggle)”, p.148, GENERAL PRESS

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• In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Heart, Wish, Reason

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• [I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.

  Sam Harris

  Faith, Religious, Lying

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.72, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Once I passed through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I Casually met there who detained me for love of me, Day by day and night by night we were together—all else Has long been forgotten by me, I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung To me, Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

  Walt Whitman

  Night, Hands, Cities

  Walt Whitman (2013). “Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892”, p.220, St. Martin's Press

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• In this tradition a story is 'holy,' and it is used as medicine," she told Radiance magazine. "The story is not told to lift you up, to make you feel better, or to entertain you, although all those things can be true. The story is meant to take the spirit into a descent to find something that is lost or missing and to bring it back to consciousness again.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Feel Better, Medicine, Missing

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• Salvador [Dali] was brought up in Spain, a country colored by the legends of Hannibal, El Greco, and Cervantes. I was brought up in Ohio, a region steeped in the tradition of Coxey's Army, the Anti-Saloon League, and William Howard Taft.

  James Thurber

  Country, Army, Ohio

  JAMES THURBER (1945). “THE THURBER CARNIVAL”

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• Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-Tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon.

  Christopher Moore

  Fall, Laos, Lao Tzu

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• I know it's late, but could you find a book for me? It's called The Slavs: Study of Pagan Tradition by Osvintsev." Barabas sighed dramatically. "Kate, you make me despair. Let's try that again from the top, except this time pretend you are an alpha." "I don't need a lecture. I just need the book." "Much better. Little more growl in the voice?" "Barabas!" "And we're there. Congratulations!

  Ilona Andrews

  Congratulations, Book, Voice

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• How do you get on with your father ' Beleth asked. 'Very well ' Pyrgus answered loyally although it was far from the truth. 'I ate mine ' Beleth told him. 'He got old and feeble and useless but he wanted to hold on to power. So I took steps. Tasted disgusting - stringy tough smelly ... you know how fathers are - but it's the custom here. You're supposed to absorb the essence that way. Rank superstition of course but well ... tradition.

  Herbie Brennan

  Father, Essence, Useless

  Herbie Brennan (2011). “Faerie Wars”, p.167, A&C Black

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• For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.

  Angela Carter

  Men, Our World, Imagination

  Angela Carter (2015). “Angela Carter's Book Of Fairy Tales”, p.10, Hachette UK

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