"Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting"
- Mason Cooley
About this Quote
Mason Cooley's quote recommends that maintaining custom is no longer a requirement, but rather a recreation. He compares it to mark gathering, which is a pastime that requires devotion and passion, however is eventually a form of home entertainment. This indicates that custom is no longer an important part of life, however rather something that individuals do for enjoyable. It likewise recommends that tradition is something that can be collected and taken pleasure in, instead of something that needs to be strictly adhered to. Cooley's quote suggests that tradition is no longer a concern, but rather something that can be taken pleasure in and valued. It recommends that tradition can be valued for its beauty and history, rather than merely sticking to it out of responsibility. Eventually, Cooley's quote suggests that tradition can be enjoyed and appreciated, rather than merely sticking to it out of obligation.
"Homer's whole language, the language in which he lived, the language that he breathed, because he never saw it, or certainly those who formed his tradition never saw it, in characters on the pages. It was all on the tongue and in the ear"
"Monty Python crowd; half of them came from Cambridge, and half of them came from Oxford. But, there seems to be this jewel, this sort of two headed tradition of doing comedy, of doing sketches, and that kind of thing"
"I don't really know of the Jewish tradition of comedy, only the Jewish tradition of not keeping your mouth shut. Complaining about all that is hard, unfair or ridiculous in life-having strong feelings, and not being able to suppress them. That, to me, is Jewish"
"Jackass: The Movie is great. I think it's in the tradition of physical comedy, which I'm really interested in. Its relationship to gravity, and how gravity acts on the body"
"However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition"
"I say it is indispensable to look ahead of and behind oneself in the present. If there is such a thing as tradition, and I believe there is, it can only exist in the sense of the most profound movements of culture"
"It is characteristic of the epistemological tradition to present us with partial scenarios and then to demand whole or categorical answers as it were"
