Best 530 quotes in «tradition quotes» category

Habit and tradition often render change undesirable.

Hello, Lucy. Do you name all your weapons, Grunthor?” “O’ course. It’s tradition.” Rhapsody nodded, understanding coming into her eyes. “That makes perfect sense. Do you find that you fight better with a weapon you’ve named?” “Yep.” Her eyes began to sparkle with excitement. “Why, Grunthor, in a way, you’re a Namer, too!” The giant broke into a pleased grin. “Well, whaddaya know. Should Oi sing a lit’le song?” “No,” said Rhapsody and Achmed in unison.

Here and throughout the Gospels, Jesus does not simply cite Scripture as though it were a self-evident, self-interpreting source of authority. He rereads it, drawing out new, often highly provocative meanings, "fulfilling" it in a way that gives it new form for a new day. What would Jesus do? Reread. The Bible tells me so.

History is most important to those without a past.

History is riddled with blood and sin.

I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them go back to their own tradition and get re-rooted. If they succeed at at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition. ... When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted. If we find ways to cherish and develop our spiritual heritage, we will avoid the kind of alienation that is destroying society, and we will become whole again. ... Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions, and this will benefit everyone.

Ich halte nichts von dem Satz, Islam und Islamismus hätten nichts miteinander zu tun. Ich halte auch nichts von apologetischen Sätzen, wie wir sie nach den Anschlägen von Paris wieder gehört haben, diese Anschläge hätten mit dem Islam nichts zu tun. Denn die Extremisten berufen sich schließlich auf kein anderes Buch als auf den Koran. Es gibt innerhalb der islamischen Theologie eine Bandbreite an Positionen – von friedlichen, menschenfreundlichen bis hin zu menschenverachtenden, gewalttätigen Haltungen. Die eigentliche Frage ist, warum sich einige Menschen auf die humanen Aspekte der 1400-jährigen Ideen-Geschichte des Islam beziehen und andere auf die grausamen. Die andere Frage ist, wie wir die offenen, menschenfreundlichen Positionen stärken können. Es ist ein Verdrängungsmechanismus, zu behaupten, die Gewalt, die wir erleben, habe nichts mit dem Islam zu tun. Es ist das Ausweichen vor einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit den Teilen der islamischen Tradition, die längst überholt sind. Die islamische Theologie muss sich dieser Auseinandersetzung stellen.

I did have the longest hair of any of the boys... I braided it myself each morning, to keep it out of the way and to remind myself of things I couldn’t quite remember but that, nevertheless, I knew to be true.

I had to decide between being a man who is not entirely a man, and being a dead man. I chose the former.

I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers - making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?

I have been lying to myself thinking that I know a man when I see one. And all those giant men who taught me what it is to be a man are also liars. Either that or you are a liar. You be the judge. There was silence. 'And just for the record, I won't leave my home in the care of a man who is not a man.

I have learned that each and every piece of cloth embodies the spirit, skill, and personal history of an individual weaver. . . . It ties together with an endless thread the emotional life of my people.

I loved buildings that had grown silently with the centuries, catching the best of each generation while time curbed the artist's pride and the philistine's vulgarity and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman.

I am not interested in what I believe. I am not even sure what I believe. I am much more interested in what the church believes.

I could not wail. Must I? Do I need to pretend? Please! Will somebody understand? Can you detach me from tradition? Please leave me alone.

Identity was partly heritage, partly upbringing, but mostly the choices you make in life.” Patricia Briggs.

I do not follow any tradition. I may stand at the beginning of one.

If ever we should find ourselves disposed not to admire those writers or artists, Livy and Virgil for instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had admired, [we ought] not to follow our own fancies, but to study them until we know how and what we ought to admire; and if we cannot arrive at this combination of admiration with knowledge, rather to believe that we are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed on.

If you assume that the new - and simply because it's new - is always to be better than the old, chances are you've never known anything valuable.

If you can't set a better example for progress, don't show disapproval against the worse tradition!

I'm not fond of a tradition that requires people to open the door for strangers. Or for kids to take candy from strangers.

I'm convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive - that challenge conventional thinking - and end in breakthroughs. It is always easier to do things the same old way...why change? To fight this, keep your dissatisfaction index high and break with tradition. Don't be too quick to accept the way things are being done. Question whether there's a better way. Very often you will find that once you make this break from the usual way - and incidentally, this is probably the hardest thing to do—and start on a new track your horizon of new thoughts immediately broadens. New ideas flow in like water. Always keep your interests broad - don't let your mind be stunted by a limited view.

Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality.

In a world where news of inhumanity bombards our sensibilities, where grasping for things goes so far beyond our needs, where time is squandered in busyness, it is a pleasure and a privilege to pause for a look at handiwork, to see beauty amidst utility, and to know that craft traditions begun so long ago serve us today.

In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.

In each generation, there is this certain wisdom of the ages that gets reburied in the fleeting drivelings of modernity; then, like a diamond in the rough, it is yet again unearthed by a very small minority who not only restores it but also polishes it and presents it as something new, something highly valuable and refreshing as understood by the current.

In the past, people around the world heard the buzzing of bees as voices of the departed, a murmured conveyance from the spirit world. This belief traces back to the cultures of Egypt and Greece, among others, where tradition held that a person's soul appeared in bee form when it left the body, briefly visible (and audible) in its journey to the hereafter...Nobody knows the exact sequence of events that led to the beginning of bees, but everyone can agree on at least one thing: we know what it sounded like.

In general the relative value of the various religions is a very difficult thing to discern; it is almost impossible, perhaps quite impossible. For a religion is known only from inside.

If you wish to break with tradition, learn your craft well, and embrace adversity

… in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of Éire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define. Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be. And by the way of the rural what may we say? A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say. Iohannes Scottus Ériugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp. (Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled)

In the Timaeus dialogues, these being a record of discussions between the Greek Statesman Solon and an Egyptian priest, Plato reports the following: 'You Greeks are all children... you have no belief rooted in the old tradition and no knowledge hoary with age. And the reason is this. There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them by fire and water, and lesser one by countless other means... You remember only one deluge, though there have been many.

In the West, people learn through the Socratic tradition. The education system was influenced by Western philosophy and is based on constantly questioning the knowledge that’s handed to you and arriving at the truth through that process of questioning. The Indian system took off from the Guru-Shishyha tradition in which your virtue as a student lay in taking tradition or parampara as it is given to you and passing it on to the next generation in the exact same way.

In your message, you told me about your family, how you don’t have any traditions. The first time I read that, it made me sad, but then I thought about it for a while and started to feel jealous. Lois, think about it! No one cares if your restaurant has tables. You can build robots, or bake bread, or do something else entirely. You’re unencumbered by culture. You’re... light!

I refuse to believe that Southern pride stems from the pain we’ve inflicted on others. Southern pride comes from what we’ve built together. In our music and art and innovation. In the people who honor us by taking our culture out into the world and celebrating it. It comes from people seeking us out, and flocking here to experience all that we know and love. We are all neighbors. We are all Southerners. This is OUR culture, and it means what WE choose it to mean. So, yes. I’ll say it again—Southern Pride is good collard greens. Death to the flag. Long live the South.

In the Christian tradition, Christ is identified with the Logos. The Logos is the Word of God. That word transformed chaos into order at the beginning of time. In his human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to the good, to God. In consequence, He died and was reborn. The Word that produced order from Chaos sacrifices everything, even itself, to God. That single sentence, beyond comprehension, sums up Christianity, Every bit of learning is a little death.

Islamic tradition does not recognize such presumptuous and conceited preoccupation as "reviewing", which is now widely practised among scholars who regard highly this legacy of the Western tradition modern scholarship. a Muslim scholar, with the work of another before him, would either - according to Islamic tradition - refute it (radd), or elaborate it further in commentary (sharh) as the occasion demands. there is no such thing as "reviewing" it, whether the "review" is termed as such or as any other term which describes it. If there are petty mistakes they turn a blind eye to them; if there are obscurities they explain them in commentary - they polish a positive work and make it shine.

It is always painful to set one's self against tradition, especially against the conventions & prejudices that hedge about womanhood.

It is necessarily so, since every traditional art obeys a particular spiritual economy that limits its themes and means of expression, so that an abandonment of that economy almost immediately releases new and apparently unlimited artistic possibilities.

It is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by a process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. [...] In political civilization, the state is an abstraction and the relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no roots in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you, whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who in the excitement of his play imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother.

In Sri Lanka, the people you lived amongst, the people you went to school with, the people in whose houses you ate, whose jokes you shared: these were not the people you married. Quite possibly they were not your religion. More to the point they were probably not your caste. This word with its fearsome connotations was never, hardly ever used. But it was ever present: it muddied the waters of Sri Lanka's politics, it perfumed the air of her bed-chambers; it lurked, like a particularly noxious relative, behind the poruwa of every wedding ceremony. It was the c-word. People used its synonym, its acronym, its antonym-indeed any other nym that came to mind - in the vain hope its meaning would somehow go away. It didn't. But if the people you chose to associate with were the very ones you could not marry, then the ones you did marry were quite often people you wouldn't dream of associating with if you had any choice in the matter.

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.

It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian to feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghosts of Alfred and Becket. 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.

It (modernization) is just another jungle closing in.

I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.

It is unlikely that many of us will be famous, or even remembered. But not less important than the brilliant few that lead a nation or a literature to fresh achievements, are the unknown many whose patient efforts keep the world from running backward; who guard and maintain the ancient values, even if they do not conquer new; whose inconspicuous triumph it is to pass on what they inherited from their fathers, unimpaired and undiminished, to their sons. Enough, for almost all of us, if we can hand on the torch, and not let it down; content to win the affection, if it may be, of a few who know us and to be forgotten when they in their turn have vanished. The destiny of mankind is not governed wholly by its 'stars'.

It’s a wonder of human behavior: we build our own handcuffs that trap and harm us. We create the myth, and we honor it. We tell the lie, and we believe it.

It seems [...] that the Native American 'brain smasher' and the ancient Egyptian goddess in the vignette from the Fifth Hour of the Duat both serve exactly the same function, namely, the annihilation and permanent destruction of unworthy souls on the afterlife journey. There are differences in the traditions, to be sure, as one would expect if they descended from a remote common ancestor many millennia ago and then evolved separately, but the fundamental similarities of the role are unmissable. A further point arising from this material has to do with the more general issue of the trials and tribulations faced by the soul on its postmortem journey. That the precise character of these obstacles should vary between ancient Egypt and ancient Native America is only to be expected. Even so, the striking similarities in the core structure of the 'story'--physical death, a journey of the soul on land, a leap to the sky involving Orion followed by a further journey with perils and challenges to be faced, through the valley of the Milky Way--all argue for some as yet unexplained connection.

It’s not a bad thing, if you’re responsible about it. Just don’t start having boyfriends. Wait until you’ve found your husband.” “And how am I supposed to find a husband if I can’t have a boyfriend until then?” I asked ironically.

It's political, sir. Apparently he wants a return to the values and traditions that made the city great, sir." "Does he _know_ what those values and traditions _were_?" said Vimes, aghast.

I will admit that we as young rebels always wanted fundamentalists to understand our take on their religion, but rarely, if ever, the other way around. The fundamentalists are the real artists. If you saw only a masterpiece of an original painting and someone threw a splash of red across it saying that their version is better, you would be offended too.