Tradition Quotes

"The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition"

John Acton, Historian

"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself"

Noam Chomsky, Activist

"What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era"

Harold Bloom, Critic

"I like the catholicity in time: our tradition is one of 2,000 years"

Hans Kung, Theologian

"If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so"

Branford Marsalis, Musician

"Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition"

Stephen Jay Gould, Scientist

"There is nothing worth having that can he obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating"

George Wald, Scientist

"Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured"

Jasmine Guy, Actress

"Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories"

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"The Latin musical tradition is very rich and gives the singer a lot of freedom to explore a range of"

Ednita Nazario, Musician

"The Army War College has been a tradition in central Pennsylvania for years"

Bill Shuster, Politician

"The only way to be true to our American tradition is to maintain absolute governmental neutrality regarding religious beliefs and practices"

Bill Bradley, Politician

"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, Artist

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

Alfred North Whitehead, Mathematician

"Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment"

Galen Rowell, Photographer

"People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place"

Irving Kristol, Editor

"Because the more you write the more you're aware of the weight of your tradition and the difficulties of the form and the more you have already done that you do not want to do again"

Tobias Wolff, Writer

"At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past"

Maurice Maeterlinck, Dramatist

"The husband - by primitive instinct partly, certainly by ancient tradition - regards himself as the active partner in matters of love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity"

Havelock Ellis, Psychologist

"I always wanted to be a farmer. There is a tradition of that in my family"

Bjork, Musician

"When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition"

Brian Eno, Musician

"What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy"

Arthur Hertzberg, Theologian

"I had hoped that the board would accept Johnny Hon's offer of a loan to buy the stadium back for the club, as I think this would be best way of continuing the long tradition of Cambridge United in Cambridge - and it was a generous offer"

Anne Campbell, Politician

"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"

Robert Fitzgerald, Author

"Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition"

Daniel Dennett, Philosopher

"Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself"

Kenzo Tange, Architect

"Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead"

Daniel Barenboim, Musician

"In some of the countries where we operate, there is a tradition of corruption, in which the political elites work with business in the framework of unsavory relationships"

Lee R. Raymond, Businessman

"I don't mind the sparkle - I think it's kind of a tradition in skating. I don't think the men really need sparkles, but for the women it's part of the glamour of our sport"

Kristi Yamaguchi, Athlete

"The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer"

Robert Fitzgerald, Author

"I would then go on to say that Homer, as we now know, was working in what they call an oral tradition"

Robert Fitzgerald, Author

"There's probably more in the American tradition than people give the place credit for"

Donald Judd, Artist

"Sometimes it is easy... to enhance your prestige by not exercising your responsibility, but that's not been the tradition of the court"

Anthony Kennedy, Judge

"Tradition has made women cowardly"

Nance O'Neil

"There is no country on earth with a stronger tradition of protecting the public's right to know"

Roy Barnes, Politician

"Whatever he does should be seen as working at the Presidency and if he goes to Colorado for Christmas, it should be for a minimum amount of time, the family tradition and family get-together aspect emphasized, and it be seen as a working vacation"

Robert Teeter, Politician

"I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written"

Saul Williams, Musician

"The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise"

Herbert Croly, Author

"I know there's some kind of history to mountain music-like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition"

Loretta Lynn, Musician

"I've always loved musical theater. It's a bit of a family tradition"

Trey Anastasio, Musician

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