Sayings about Tradition
The young cannot teach tradition to the old. ~ Beninese Proverb
Follow the customs or flee the country. ~ Zulu Proverb
Custom is the guide of the ignorant. ~ English Proverb
Custom and law are sisters. ~ Slovak Proverb
Customs are stronger than laws. ~ Hebrew Proverb
We must convince by reason, not prescribe by tradition. ~ Cypriot Proverbs
Every community has its own customs and traditions. ~ Filipino Proverbs
As a child, is a man wrapped in his mother’s womb; as an adult, in tradition; comes death, and he is wrapped in earth. ~ Malawian Proverb
Each country’s customs are different, just as each meadow’s grass is different. ~ Mongolian Proverbs
Break the legs of an evil custom. ~ Italian Proverbs
Going into a country the first time, ask what is forbidden; on entering a village, ask what are the customs; on entering a private house, ask what should not be mentioned. ~ Chinese Proverb
Quotations about Tradition
The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. ~ Douglas Adams
Cultures grow on the vine of tradition. ~ Jonah Goldberg
Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Tradition is the illusion of permanence. ~ Woody Allen
Sometimes tradition and habit are just that, comfortable excuses to leave things be, even when they are unjust and unworthy. ~ Matthew Scully
Nothing is more powerful than custom or habit. ~ Ovid
Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always. ~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. ~ Walter Lippmann
As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.~ Allan Bloom
People do more from custom than from reason. ~ Author Unknown
Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them. ~ Thomas Hardy
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
Tradition, long conditioned thinking, can bring about a fixation, a concept that one readily accepts, perhaps not with a great deal of thought. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. ~ Lewis Mumford
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains. ~ James A. Michener
Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art. ~ John Updike
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. ~ Jacques Barzun
Tradition is comforting. It’s solemn, steady and unwavering. ~ Will Peebles
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living. ~ Harold Macmillan
Laws are subordinate to custom. ~ Titus Maccius Plautus
It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor. ~ T. S. Eliot
Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can’t even describe and aren’t even aware of. ~ Ellen Goodman
Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them. ~ Joseph Addison
Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. ~ Jaroslav Pelikan
Tradition is a fine thing. Nothing comes out of the blue, except perhaps thunderbolts and they are not really very useful things. ~ Stacy Aumonier
Tradition may be good or bad. ~ Noah Webster
A precedent embalms a principle. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
The dead govern the living. ~ Auguste Comte
It is of the essence of traditions that they cover or conceal their humble foundations by erecting impressive edifices on them. ~ Leo Strauss
A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward. ~ Winston Churchill
Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. ~ Mark Twain
Tradition: one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking. ~ Warren Ellis
Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. ~ Carl Jung
Our American tradition of neighbor helping neighbor has always been one of our greatest strengths and most noble traditions. ~ Ronald Reagan
Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable. ~ Soren Kierkegaard
A tradition without intelligence is not worth having. ~ T. S. Eliot
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom. ~ Michel Eyquem De Montaigne
Human beings need to belong to a tradition and equally need to know about the world in which they find themselves. ~ Paula Gunn Allen
Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
A kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition. ~ George Eliot
In America nothing dies easier than tradition. ~ Russell Wayne Baker
When men are oppressed, it’s a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it’s tradition. ~ Letty Cottin Pogrebin
The empire of custom is most mighty. ~ Publilius Syrus
Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash. ~ Winston Churchill
Tradition is a great resistant force and the inertia of history. Yet because it is only negative, it must be destroyed. ~ Friedrich Engels
The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances. ~ Stephen Bayley
The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. ~ Oscar Wilde
The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. ~ Mark Twain
You do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. ~ John Searle
All tradition is merely the past. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement. ~ John Stuart Mill
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. ~ David Hume
As tradition is a gift of the Spirit, its trajectory moves in the right direction, although it has not arrived at its destination. ~ Brian D. Mclaren
Custom reconciles us to everything. ~ Edmund Burke
Sometimes traditions turn into unwritten rules we don’t want to break. ~ Jay Feeney
People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom. ~ Francis Bacon
Customs form us all. Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed beliefs are consequences of our place of birth. ~ Aaron Hill
Custom, that unwritten law, by which the people keep even kings in awe. ~ Charles Davenport
Our traditions are who we are. ~ Paul L. Valletta
A tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past.~ Wikipedia (Read full article!)
