Tradition Quotes

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

"Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young"

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

"Anybody who had come up with a new concept would have been under suspicion for being out of step with the tradition or out of step with the teachings of the church"

John Templeton, Businessman

"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

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

Jeffery Deaver, Writer

"Since there will be no one left to talk peace after the next war, it makes good sense to break with tradition and hold the peace conference first"

William Glasser, Psychologist

"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, Musician

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

Irving Kristol, Editor

"For God's sake build not your faith upon Tradition, 'tis as rotten as a rotten Post"

Nicholas Culpeper, Scientist

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

Maurice Maeterlinck, Dramatist

"These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science"

Michael Polanyi, Scientist

"In the true sense one's native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home"

Emma Goldman, Activist

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

Bjork, Musician

"I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition"

Bruce Springsteen, 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

"The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart"

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Journalist

"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 decided that the University of Sussex in Brighton was a good place for this work because it had a strong tradition in bacterial molecular genetics and an excellent reputation in biology"

Paul Nurse, Scientist

"Certainly the emphasis I place in this chapter on coordination of behavior and cooperation to mutual benefit is something that ought to be very congenial to people in the libertarian tradition"

Robert Nozick, Philosopher

"There was an honorable tradition of using anonymous sources that was ruined by Jayson Blair"

Ted Rall, Cartoonist

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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, Novelist

"We, of our time, have played our part in the perseverance, and we have pledged ourselves to the dead generations who have preserved intact for us this glorious heritage, that we, too, will strive to be faithful to the end, and pass on this tradition unblemished"

Eamon de Valera, Statesman

"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

"Because it equates tradition with prejudice, the left finds itself increasingly unable to converse with ordinary people in their common language"

Christopher Lasch, Historian

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

Bill Bradley, Politician

"I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!"

Brian Eno, Musician

"Another term for preventive war is aggressive war - starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition"

Ron Paul, Politician

"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

"Everywhere, authority and tradition have to justify themselves in the face of questions"

Gustav Heinemann, Politician

"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

"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

"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

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