Quotes About Customs

In any traditional empire, the purpose of government was not to guide or provide services for the population but to tax them. It did not usually attempt to interfere with the social customs or religious beliefs of its subjects. Rather, a government was set up to take whatever it could from its peasants and prevent other aristocrats from getting their surplus, so warfare- to conquer, expand, or maintain the tax base- was essential to these states.

The same is the case with those opinions of man to which he has been accustomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views.

Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.

And of course we are familiar with the English common law rule of thumb that said a man could in fact use a stick no bigger than his thumb to discipline his wife and family.

Tradition, thou art for suckling children, Thou art the enlivening milk for babes, But no meat for men is in thee.

As men begin to grow civilized, they cease to be satisfied with mere taboos.

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility.

In Biblical times, a man could have as many wives as he could afford. Just like today.

Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.

I remember when my mother pointed to a stone, and she said this was the kind of stone people used to place on the feet of the baby girls to stop them trying to climb away and unbind their feet.

Whenever I get married, it will be a Bengali wedding. If I won't have a Bengali wedding, my mother won't come. She has warned me. So, I am going to have a Bengali wedding for sure.

Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth.

I come from a Greek household. My mother wouldn't let the FedEx man come in without eating.

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.

Culture changes, fashions change, customs change. Great music is immortal.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

Habits form a second nature.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.

The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice -- and always has been.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs... of our barbarous ancestors.

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out

Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.