“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it”
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes

“Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.”

“People will selectively use “tradition” to justify anything.”
Source: Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Speech at a farewell function for outgoing United States Ambassador David Lyon, 15 July 2005 (excerpts)

Source: Novels, Vampires of Portlandia (2020), Chapter 5

Address at a Citizenship Ceremony, Winnipeg Manitoba, May 20, 1955
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

OSCON 2002
Context: It's insane. It's extreme. It's controlled by political interests. It has no justification in the traditional values that justify legal regulation. And we've done nothing about it. We're bigger than they are. We've got rights on our side. And we've done nothing about it. We let them control this debate. Here's the refrain that leads to this: They win because we've done nothing to stop it.

Evolution and Ethics (1893)
Context: Even purely intellectual progress brings about its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out. Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, hallowed by tradition and professing to hold good for all time, are put to the question. Cultured reflection asks for their credentials; judges them by its own standards; finally, gathers those of which it approves into ethical systems, in which the reasoning is rarely much more than a decent pretext for the adoption of foregone conclusions.<!--p. 56