Quotes About Tradition

My effort and ability to learn was always contextualized within the framework of generational family experience. Certain behaviors, gestures, habits of being were traced back. Attending

Kindlon and Thompson carefully depoliticize their language. Their use of the word "tradition" belies the reality that the patriarchal culture which has socialized almost everyone in our nation to dismiss the emotional life of boys is an entrenched social and political system.

Smohalla, a Wanapum prophet from the Pacific Northwest, exhorted his followers to abandon all the ways of the white man and not to plough or harvest or work in any way, "because men who work cannot dream.")

You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo.

New Year's has never been a real holiday to me anyway. There's no gifts, no feast, just…bad TV.

And just as it is with all proper grannies, she ordered me into my pink bunny jammies.

Just the usual formality before the chaos begins. Like playing the National Anthem before a Cubs game.

There is a thing called the blood feud. All societies have them, even the West Saxons have them, despite their vaunted piety. Kill a member of my family and I shall kill one of yours, and so it goes on, generation after generation or until one family is all dead, and Kjartan had just wished a blood feud on himself. I did not know how, I did not know where, I could not know when, but I would revenge Ragnar. I swore it that night.

History is not just a tale of men's making, but is a thing tied to the land. We call a hill by the name of a hero who died there, or name a river after a princess who fled beside its banks, and when the old names vanish, the stories go with them and the new names carry no reminder of the past.

Um país é a sua história, bispo; a soma de todas as suas histórias. Somos o que nossos pais fizeram de nós, suas vitórias nos deram o que temos .

I will never understand Christians. I have seen men and women whip themselves till their backs were nothing but strips of flesh hanging from exposed ribs, watched pilgrims limp on bleeding broken feet to worship the tooth of the whale that swallowed Jonah, and seen a man hammer nails through his own feet. What god wants such nonsense? And why prefer a god who wants you to torture yourself instead of worshipping Eostre who wants you to take a girl into the woods and make babies?

How anyone could endure three or four hours of chanting monks and ranting priests was beyond my understanding, just as it was beyond my understanding to know why bishops needed thrones. They would be demanding crowns next.

Why do they put cows over the gates, sir? For the same reason we put images of a tortured man in our churches. Religion. You ask too many questions, Sharpe.

Language is now my trade, boy, because I have become a skald.' 'A skald?' 'A scop, you would call me. A poet, a weaver of dreams, a man who makes glory from nothing and dazzles you with its making. And my job now is to tell this day's tale in such a way that men will never forget our great deeds.

You do know what happens at Easter!" Ceolnoth demanded sternly. "Of course I know," I said, "we make babies." "That is the most ridiculous..." Ceolberht began to protest, then went silent when his brother glared at him. "It's my favourite feast," I continued happily. "Easter is baby-making day!

We cut off their long hair, for I liked to caulk my ships' planks with the hair of slain enemies

They're praying to ham bones, ham bones! The blessed pig!

He believed that virtues are handed down through a man's loins! What nonsense! A

The equinox came. The Christians celebrated the death feast of their God while we lit the vast fires of Beltain

why prefer a god who wants you to torture yourself instead of worshipping Eostre who wants you to take a girl into the woods and make babies?

And when you speak with him," I said, "tell him to stop hitting his wife." Erkenwald jerked as though I had just struck him in the face. "It is his Christian duty," he said stiffly, "to discipline his wife, and it is her duty to submit. Did you not listen to what I preached?

Mothers were sacred. Mothers were not expected to be pretty.

How many's that?" I asked the shepherd. "Jiggit and mumph, lord," he said. "Is that enough?" "It's enough, lord." "Kill the rest then," I said. "Jiggit and mumph?" Willibald asked, still shivering. "Twenty and five," I said. "Yain, tain, tether, mether, mumph. It's how shepherds count. I don't know why. The world is full of mystery.

There is probably no way for Westerners to understand Asian religions from a purely traditional Indian, Chinese, or Japanese perspective, but perhaps is there no need either to do so.