Quotes About Custom

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

White people who wished to think well of themselves did not use the language of racial insult in front of black people. But the problem for us white people, as we finally had to understand, was that we could not be selectively complicit. To be complicit at all, even thoughtlessly by custom, was to be complicit in the whole extent and reach of the injustice. It is hard for customary indifference to utstick itself from the abominations to which it tacitly consents.

The sun is setting," he said, and Jordan rose obediently to charge the glasses. The sundowner whisky was already a traditional ending to the day in this land north of the Limpopo.

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

Custom gives the same stability to the group that heredity and instinct give to the species, and habit to the individual. It is the routine that keeps men sane; for if there were no grooves along which thought and action might move with unconscious ease, the mind would be perpetually hesitant, and would soon take refuge in lunacy.

In this loose structure law was weak, unpopular, and diverse. The people preferred to be ruled by custom, and to settle their disputes by face-saving compromises out of court. They expressed their view of litigation by such pithy proverbs as "Sue a flea and catch a bite," or "Win your lawsuit, lose your money.

We have defined civilization as "social order promoting cultural creation."67 It is political order secured through custom, morals, and law, and economic order secured through a continuity of production and exchange; it is cultural creation through freedom and facilities for the origination, expression, testing, and fruition of ideas, letters, manners, and arts. It is an intricate and precarious web of human relationships, laboriously built and readily destroyed.

Social evolution is an interplay of custom with origination.

custom is the natural selection of those modes of action that have been found most convenient in the experience of the group.

It is true that, if the affections or aptness of the children be extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it; but generally the precept" of the Pythagoreans "is good, Optimum lege suave et facile illud faciet consuetudo,"—choose the best; custom will make it pleasant and easy.35 For "custom is the principal magistrate of man's life."36

If we go back to the beginning," says Holbach, "we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that custom respects and tyranny supports them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own interests.

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.

Yes but he is a man though, don't you see? You could knit one quicker than you can make one fit off-the-shelf.

A good old custom. Always fornicate Between clean sheets and spit on a well-scrubbed floor.

The bodhi tree has been converted into a marriage tree. The belief is that young women who die before marriage should have a husband in the next world. Their relatives bring a wedding dress and monks to this tree and perform a wedding ceremony. The spirit of the dead woman is married to a famous singer, poet or magician who died many years ago. Their families believe that he'll be a good husband will look after each wife as if she were the only one.

Now the Irish have a strange custom: whenever the name of County Mayo is spoken (whether in praise, blame, or non-committally, as soon as the world Mayo is spoken, the Irish add: 'God help us!" It sounds like the response in a litany: 'Lord, have mercy upon us!

In olden times sacrifices were made at the altar, a custom which is still continued.

Tradition has it that Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, preferred to speak French to diplomats, Italian to ladies, German to stable boys and Spanish to God. English he seems to have used sparingly – to talk to geese.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

I suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady passionless course of time.

Man must not check reason by tradition, but contrariwise, must check tradition by reason.

i wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. i wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. i felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. i suffered most from the feeling that custom was daily petrifying our lives into one fixed shape, that our minds were losing their freedom and becoming enslaved to the steady passionless course of time.

The eye that sees is not a mere physical organ but a means of perception conditioned by the tradition in which its possessor has been reared.    ââ'¬â€RUTH BENEDICT

That's it?" "That's it. And then you jump in. It's all just tradition. I mean,