382 Quotes About Tradition

In your message, you told me about your family, how you don’t have any traditions. The first time I read that, it made me sad, but then I thought about it for a while and started to feel jealous. Lois, think about it! No one cares if your restaurant has tables. You can build robots, or bake bread, or do something else entirely. You’re unencumbered by culture. You’re... light!

Look at yourself; you are the same person since you were born. During these forty years of your life, all the cells of your body have changed, but you are still you, even though you are liv- ing in time and space. So it is with tradition.

when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. 'The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.' 

I could do worse than become my own grandma, or anyone of the strong women who raised us. Our strengths emerged from theirs; we build on their heritage and transform their resilience and competence into our own.

I can listen to what my elders have to say and still do the opposite of what they think is right. It is my life to live. I am responsible for it.

We believe tradition makes us strong when it's just a leash meant to bring us to our knees.

Indians think it is important to remember, while Americans believe it is important to forget.

..there is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy, a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History, and, even, with the European tradition.

A mistake, committed for a few generations, becomes a tradition.