Quotes About Traditions

A culture finds the gods it needs

I only attend church for hatches, matches, and dispatches.

Holidays are the best. I couldn't imagine being from a small family.

Intelligence and rationalism are not in themselves revolutionary. But technical thinking is foreign to all social traditions: the machine has no tradition. One of Karl Marx's seminal sociological discoveries is that technology is the true revolutionary principle, beside which all revolutions based on natural law are antiquated forms of recreation. A society built exclusively on progressive technology would thus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy itself and its technology.

It was sad to see the peasants' ingratitude. And their superstitions. And their stubborness. And so on, and so on.

We often take these social rituals for granted, but we do so at our own peril. They are more fragile than we think. Like fine crystal, they break easily and are hard to glue back together.

Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you're home

That generation's shibboleths—well, you know. What

It's true, Christmas can feel like a lot of work, particularly for mothers. But when you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you'll find you've created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul.

In the East — in Greece and Syria and Egypt — the Romans had conquered countries which had ancient and splendid traditions, and were more civilized than their conquerors.

Continental people have sex-lives the English have hot-water bottles.

Each of the conquered kingdoms had its own laws and traditions. King Aegon did little to interfere with those. He allowed his lords to continue to rule much as they always had, with all the same powers and prerogatives. The laws of inheritance and succession remained unchanged, the existing feudal structures were confirmed, lords both great and small retained the power of pit and gallows on their own land, and the privilege of the first night wherever that custom had formerly prevailed.

I wanted to become an atheist but I gave it up. They have no holidays.

Heirlooms we don't have in our family. But stories we've got.

Before he sets out, the traveller must possess fixed interests and facilities, to be served by travel. If he drifted aimlessly from country to country he would not travel but only wander, ramble as a tramp. The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere so his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.

I don't worry about traditions overmuch. The fact is, I could change my mind as to whether I want something. For one reason or another, it could lose its appeal.

What did people do with enormous families? All those cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews. How did they keep them straight? How did they breathe at any sort of family function?

That was my life, Qhuinn. Those children…were my future, what was going to be left of me when I'm dead and gone. They were going to be…" As his voice cracked, he took a long drag. "They were going to carry my parents' traditions forward. They were milestones and happiness and a wholeness that even you can't give me.

I lived among the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by European contact.

To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.

-You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!

Finding out what particular insights mean to people in other traditions enables us not only to respect but to love the wisdom of other religions.

Our refining is a re-envisioning of not only our current society but also our traditions, remnants of the visions of previous generations.

is common knowledge that many of the Christmas traditions we observe today come from the Victorians. Dickens solidified and immortalized the image of a perfect family Christmas—much of which the English had adopted from the Germans via Prince Albert