Quotes About Tradition

Do you know what most people have from their grandmother? A tea set. Or a quilt." Curran smiled. "If your family had a quilt, it would be made out of chimera skin and stuffed with feathers from dead angels.

Only Celts would use nine letters to make one sound.

Dakkan, my spear. My grandmother had a huge problem with that name, because the closest translation of it to English would be "Stabby." She claimed it wasn't a proper name for a weapon, so after the first Dakkan broke, I offered to name the new one Sharpy McStabbison, the Son of Stabby, after which she groaned and left my quarters, followed by a throng of her advisors all giving me reproachful looks.

This is embarrassing," Mr. Haffey informed me. I winked at him. "What, Mrs. Haffey never carried you over the threshold on your wedding night?

No." Roman got up off his chair. "The wedding night is for you and Curran. The wedding is for everyone else and it's the price you pay so you can get to the wedding night.

When I was a young man, it was very fashionable not to have the sacred thread ceremony, and among very respectable families, mind you. As a rebel, I decided to do it.

When I was growing up in Nigeria - and I shouldn't say Nigeria, because that's too general, but in Afikpo, the Igbo part of the country where I'm from - there were always rites of passage for young men. Men were taught to be men in the ways in which we are not women; that's essentially what it is.

Many Muslim parents are authoritarian, which leaves young men and women with limited spaces to express themselves. Self-expression and autonomy are regarded as symptoms of 'Westernisation.'

I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've always turned it into a matter of honor and a way of gaining acceptance back into society if they survived.

Many young men in the 1960s and 1970s came to reject some of the traditional ideas about manhood that many of their fathers tried to pass down - like unquestioning respect for authority even when that might mean killing and dying for questionable or unjust causes such as the Vietnam War.

I saw a documentary on the Naadam festival that happens in Mongolia during the summer. One of the features of it is a horse race across the plains that all the young men enter - some as young as 12 years old. It's such a spectacular sight. It's incredible to think that this is a tradition that has been going on for centuries.

Saudi Arabia operates according to the belief that God made young men and women so utterly and completely without self-control that they must be physically segregated every moment of the day and night.

Mittelstand companies are incredibly focused and almost always family-run. The young men and women go through the apprenticeship system and learn that the goal is excellence.

In Egypt, where my research is focused, I have seen plenty of trouble in and out of the citadel. There are legions of young men who can't afford to get married, because marriage has become a very expensive proposition. They are expected to bear the burden of costs in married life, but they can't find jobs.

In our culture, I think that there is no markers anymore. Young men don't really have something that says you're a grown up now, until you have a baby.

One thing that was very clear to me is that the young people in a place like Annawadi aren't tripping on caste the way their parents are. They know their parents have these old views.

The gratification of helping others is a very American tradition and a Judeo-Christian tradition. Now it is great to see young people creating funds and giving back in all sorts of productive ways. It's a terrifically satisfying thing.

Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those young people don't have to find out by trial and error.

Young people in my generation were sort of in lockstep, and it wasn't just the '40s, either. In the '30s and in the '50s it was the same. No one ever dropped out unless he got sick or got kicked out.

Going to salsa clubs may be popular, but I feel we're really missing something as a society by overlooking ballroom dancing. If only we could persuade schools to teach it or there was somewhere young people could go on a Saturday night to learn it.

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

What's happened - in our country, anyhow - is that the young people have shied away from the formality of the concert hall, that tie - and - tails philharmonic image.

It's never popular among young people to be part of the establishment.

When I was young, no one got married. Now, all the young people, they want to get married, they want security. Now that my children's friends are getting married, I go to more weddings than I ever did when I was young.