Quotes about tradition (1796 quotes, page 17)

“The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Ur-Fascism (1995)
Context: [Ur-Fascism] depends on the cult of action for action's sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering's alleged statement ("When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," "universities are a nest of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

“Instead of maintaining the traditional separation of science and values, cognitive theory says the two come together in brain function.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

New Mindset on Consciousness (1987)
Context: Instead of maintaining the traditional separation of science and values, cognitive theory says the two come together in brain function. If we are correct in saying that our conscious mental values not only arise from, but also influence brain processing, then it becomes possible to integrate values with the physical world on a scientific rather than supernatural basis. It's been the traditional role of religion to affirm the primary importance of our higher values in this world by invoking a supreme power. In cognitivism, it is science that affirms the powerful controlling role of higher values, and it is able to do so on grounds that are verifiable — that is, testable against reality as it really is.
On these new terms, science no longer upholds a value-empty existence, in which everything, including the human mind, is driven entirely by strictly physical forces of the most elemental kind. We get a vastly revised answer to the old question "What does science leave to believe in?" that gives us a different image of science and the kind of truth science stands for. This new outlook leads to realistic, this world values that provide a strong moral basis for environmentalism and population controls and for policies that would protect the long-term evolving quality of the biosphere.

Science

“In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist.”

Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Variant translation:
To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger. For historical materialism it is a question of holding fast to a picture of the past, just as if it had unexpectedly thrust itself, in a moment of danger, on the historical subject. The danger threatens the stock of tradition as much as its recipients. For both it is one and the same: handing itself over as the tool of the ruling classes. In every epoch, the attempt must be made to deliver tradition anew from the conformism which is on the point of overwhelming it. For the Messiah arrives not merely as the Redeemer; he also arrives as the vanquisher of the Anti-christ. The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.
As translated by Dennis Redmond (2001)
Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)
Context: To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.

“The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.”

Alfred Jules Ayer book Language, Truth, and Logic

Source: Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), Ch. 1, first lines.
Context: The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.

Parting

“You must try first to rid your mind of the traditional idea that the gothic is an intentional expression of religious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of the gothic architects. They needed light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common-sense in trying to get it. They converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminished their piers, until their churches could no longer stand.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: If you are to get the full enjoyment of Chartres, you must, for the time, believe in Mary as Bernard and Adam did, and feel her presence as the architects did, in every stone they placed, and in every touch they chiseled. You must try first to rid your mind of the traditional idea that the gothic is an intentional expression of religious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of the gothic architects. They needed light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common-sense in trying to get it. They converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminished their piers, until their churches could no longer stand. You will see the limit at Beauvais; at Chartres we have not got so far, but even here in places where the Virgin wanted it — as above the high altar — the architect has taken all the light there was to take.

Motivation , Idea , Sense , Light

“By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

"The Individual in the Animal Kingdom" (1912); quoted in From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences (1992) by Connie Barlow, Ch. 6 "Blurred Bounds of Individuality" 
Context: In the actual duration of his life, the individual ranges from the bacterium's hour to the the big tree's five thousand years. Man in this again stands at the pinnacle of individuality — not in mere length of days, but in having found a means to perpetuate a part of himself in spite of death.
By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, the whole progress of civilization is based upon this power. Once more the upward progress of terrestrial life towards individuality has found apparently insurmountable obstacles, gross material difficulties before it, but once more through consciousness it finds wings, and, laughing at matter, flies over lightly where it could not climb.
To such an individuality, one that can thus transcend the limits of its substance, the name Personality is commonly given. Man alone possesses true personality, though there is as it were an aspiration towards it visible among the higher vertebrates, stirring their placid automatism with airs of consciousness.

Death , People , Books , Tear

“Whatever failures may have come to parliamentary government in countries which have not those traditions, and where it is not a natural growth, that is no proof that parliamentary government has failed.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Empire Parliamentary Association's Conference in Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 5
1935
Context: It is often said to-day by detractors of democracy, at home and particularly abroad, that the parliamentary system has failed. After all, this is the only country... where parliamentary government has grown up, the only country in which it is traditional and hereditary, where it is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. Whatever failures may have come to parliamentary government in countries which have not those traditions, and where it is not a natural growth, that is no proof that parliamentary government has failed.

Failure , Nature , Country

“The memories of colonialism and its association with aggressive Christian missionary activity, misrepresentation of other religions, and the lack of genuine interest in the study and understanding of these traditions are not easily erased.”

Anantanand Rambachan (1951) Hindu studies scholar

Source: The Nature and Authority of Scripture (1995), p. 20
Context: In a thoughtful series of reflections on the future of Hindu-Christian Dialogue, Klaus Klostermaier observes that there are "few Hindus who are interested in (contemporary) Christian theology, and there are fewer still who have a desire to enter into dialogue with their Christian counterparts". Others have noted that, with few notable exceptions, the initiatives for dialogue in recent times have been from the Christian side. In an earlier study, I suggested, briefly, a few possible reasons for this lack of interest on the Hindu side. The memories of colonialism and its association with aggressive Christian missionary activity, misrepresentation of other religions, and the lack of genuine interest in the study and understanding of these traditions are not easily erased. There are still barriers of mistrust to overcome.

Religion , Understanding , Study , Memory

“From a purely human standpoint the wisdom traditions are the species' most prolonged and serious attempts to infer from the maze on this side of the tapestry the pattern which, on its right side, gives meaning to the whole.”

Huston Smith book The World's Religions

The World's Religions (1991)
Context: The religions begin by assuring us that if we could see the full picture we would find it more integrated than we would normally suppose. Life gives us no view of the whole. [... ] It is as if life were a great tapestry, which we face from its wrong side. This gives it the appearance of a maze of knots and threads, which for the most part appear chaotic.
From a purely human standpoint the wisdom traditions are the species' most prolonged and serious attempts to infer from the maze on this side of the tapestry the pattern which, on its right side, gives meaning to the whole. As the beauty and harmony of the design derive from the way its parts are related, the design confers on these parts a significance that we, seeing only scraps of the design, do not normally perceive.

Wisdom

“Western classical music, to be sure, is not part of traditional Iranian culture, and yes it’s elitist. But the fact that the Tehran symphony Orchestra and the Roudaki Hall have survived the vagaries of these past three decades is yet another evidence that the forces of darkness, the cult of death, martyrdom and superstition has not conquered the spirit of our nation.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

"Peace and Stability in the Middle East and Beyond: A Hostage to Iranian Intransigence and Adventurism." http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=142&page=4, Oct. 24, 2007.
Speeches, 2007

Death , Music , Past , Parting

“When one looks at Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision of an Islamic Government, one realizes that it actually had little to do with the traditional thinking of the Shi’ite establishment. I say this in the sense that his concept of the “Velayate Faghih” (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists) has in effect violated at least two of the most cardinal principles of the Shi’ite faith. The first being that, the only time divine rule could be envisaged to have domain over us on Earth is upon the reappearance of the 12th Imam, who is considered a “Ma’soum” (or non-sinner). Until then, it is not the role of the clerics to govern society in the name of religion. The second being the principle of “Takassore Maraje’”, or the plurality of sources of emulation, in other words multiple high ranking clerical leaders, as opposed to a single source such as the Pope in Catholicism.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

“The Challenge Of Implementing Democracy And Human Rights In Iran” http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=437&page=1, The International Society Of Human Rights - Bonn, Germany, March 27, 2010.
Speeches, 2010

Faith , Religion , Thinking , Sense

“[…] Tradition is not a childish and outmoded mythology but a science that is terribly real.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

Science

“This idea of the state as a force (which as a result of the current general state of ignorance is seen as a German Prussian idea) is plainly a Latin and Italian one. It is directly linked with the intellectual tradition of Rome and was refurbished by Machiavelli’s political philosophy.”

Alfredo Rocco (1875–1935) Italian politician and jurist

As quoted in Modern Political Ideologies, Third Edition, Andrew Vincent, West Sussex, UK, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, p. 156

Idea

“The Jami Masjid of Badaun, also built by Iletmish is one of the largest mosques in India. Following the traditional courtyard plan, it also utilizes Hindu temple pillars. The entrance arches of the gateways leading into the courtyard of the Mosque presumably recall those in the great Mosques at Delhi and Ajmer…”

Iltutmish (1210–1236) Sultan of Mamluk Sultanate

Badaun (Uttar Pradesh) Syed Mahmudul Hasan, Mosque Architecture of Pre-Mughal Bengal, Dacca (Bangladesh), 1979, p. 39

“The world is driven by contradictory movements to produce developments and changes which in turn drive struggle and innovation. Marxism and Chinese traditional culture have a high degree of internal consistency on this point, which precisely constitutes the deep philosophical roots of the Sinification of Marxism.”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

"Philosophy and History" (2018)

World , Change

“The Thousand and One Nights, with its magnificent apparatus of genii and afrits, is the greatest work of fantasy that has ever been evolved by tradition, and given literary form. But it, alas, is not English, and has no English equivalent. The Western world does not seem to have conceived the necessity of fairy-tales for grown-ups — though it has been suggested that the modern detective story is an equivalent — and that is perhaps why it condemns them to a life of unremitted toil.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

English Prose Style (1928)
Literary Quotes

World , Life , Night

“Parliament is the centre of the British Empire. It is the responsibility of the members of Parliament, to whatever party they belong, to see that the tradition which has insensibly grown up, which is not a product of this or that constitution-monger, but which is the result of the unthought-out efforts for the public good of the various constituent individuals who from generation to generation, either in this House or in the other, had the conduct of public affairs is continued. It is their action which has made Great Britain what it is, and has founded all over the world institutions modelled upon ours and showing that, whether the British Constitution be or be not the best Constitution in the world for all kinds and sorts of men, it is undoubtedly the best Constitution for people of British origin, British tradition, British hopes, and British ideals. That is why I am consoled by the gradual rising of new generations as old generations vanish.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Speech in the Speaker's Courtyard of Parliament for his 80th birthday ceremony (25 July 1928), quoted in The Times (26 July 1928), p. 16
Lord President of the Council

Housing , Hope , People , World

“Production, and production alone, can find us relief in our immediate situation. It is no part of the British character to resign ourselves to such difficulties or to fail to take the measures, however hard, to overcome them. It has been truly said that by our faith we can move mountains. It is by our faith in ourselves, in our country, in the free democratic traditions for which the people of this country have for centuries fought and battled, and for which they must fight again as willingly on the economic front as upon the oceans, on the land and in the air, it is by our faith in the deep spiritual values that we acknowledge in our Christian faith, that we shall be enabled and inspired to move the present mountains of our difficulties, and so emerge into that new and fertile plain of prosperity which we shall travel in happiness only as the result of our own efforts and our own vision.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/aug/07/state-of-the-nation#column_1766 in the House of Commons (7 August 1947)
President of the Board of Trade

Faith , Country , Mountain , People

“Nothing in the traditional life of Aborigines was more impressive than their practical knowledge. They were masters of their environment even though they could do little to change it.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia (2015)

Knowledge , Life , Change

“The Marine Corps, then, believes that it has earned this right—to have its future decided by the legislative body which created it—nothing more. Sentiment is not a valid consideration in determining questions of national security. We have pride in ourselves and in our past, but we do not rest our case on any presumed ground of gratitude owing us from the Nation. The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps. If the Marine as a fighting man has not made a case for himself after 170 years of service, he must go. But I think you will agree with me that he has earned the right to depart with dignity and honor, not by subjugation to the status of uselessness and servility planned for him by the War Department.”

Alexander Vandegrift (1887–1973) United States Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipient and Commandant of the Marine Corps

Conclusion of Vandegrift's "Bended Knee Speech" to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, delivered on May 6, 1946.

Question , War , Future , Gratitude

“The defensive organization of Iwo Jima was the most complete and effective yet encountered. The beaches were flanked by high terrain favorable to the defenders. Artillery, mortars, and rocket launchers were well concealed, yet could register on both beaches- in fact, on any point on the island. Observation was possible, both from Mount Suribachi at the south end and from a number of commanding hills and steep defiles sloping to the sea from all sides of the central Motoyama tableland afforded excellent natural cover and concealment, and lent themselves readily to the construction of subterranean positions to which the Japanese are addicted. Knowing the superiority of the firepower which would be brought against them by air, sea, and land, they had gone underground most effectively, while remaining ready to man their positions with mortars, machine guns, and other portable weapons the instant our troops started to attack. The defenders were dedicated to expending themselves- but expending themselves skillfully and protractedly in order to exact the uttermost toll from the attackers. Small wonder then that every step had to be won slowly by men inching forward with hand weapons, and at heavy costs. There was no other way of doing it. The skill and gallantry of our Marines in this exceptionally difficult enterprise was worthy of their best traditions and deserving of the highest commendation. This was equally true of the naval units acting in their support, especially those engaged at the hazardous beaches. American history offers no finer example of courage, ardor and efficiency.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Third Report, p. 174-175
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

Courage , History , Support , Nature

“Probably there is no single doctrine of the Esoteric Tradition which makes so instant an appeal as does the idea of the present existence in the world of great sages or seers. In most minds there lies an intuition that there must be in the world human beings of far loftier spiritual capacity and of immensely more developed intellectual power than the ordinary run of men. Those who hear of this for the first time instantly turn to those luminous figures, such as Gautama the Buddha, Jesus the Syrian avatara, Apollonius of Tyana, Lao-Tse, Krishna, Sankaracharya, etc. and, among many, the first reaction is: if such great figures have already existed in the world, why should they not exist again?”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 19

Time , World , Idea , Making love

“My grandfather said people who can learn, learn morality the way they learn everything else, by building on history. He also said that some people cannot learn from history, so they cannot change. For them, there’s only one book or tradition or whatever it’s called in their religion, and in that book God is eternal and whatever the book says God commanded two or three or four thousand years ago, God still commands today. That may be kill homosexuals or kill nonbelievers. It may say enslave your enemies. It may say mutilate or sequester women, or sell your ten-year-old daughter for somebody’s third wife.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 49, p. 391

God , Religion , History , Daughters

“I have a term I came up with called fusion fiction – that’s what it felt like, with the absence of full stops, the long sentences. The form is very free-flowing and it allowed me to be inside the characters’ heads and go all over the place – the past, the present. For me, there’s always a level of experimentation – I’m not happy writing what we might call traditional novels…”

Bernardine Evaristo (1959) British writer

On what she calls her writing style in “Bernardine Evaristo: ‘I want to put presence into absence’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristo-girl-woman-other-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 27)

Past , Happiness

“A great artist is born from a profound knowledge of the tradition and problems of painting. However, there are many works in which freshness and audacity surprise, as can be seen in popular art and in certain examples of modern art.”

Fernando Botero (1932–2023) Colombian artist

On the influence of culture on an artist in “Interview With Fernando Botero” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interview-with-fernando-botero_b_6795782 in HuffPost (2017 Dec 6)

Knowledge , Problem , Painting , Art

“My main concern was to write a novel that uses all of this stuff that is accessible, to write a novel that deals with white racism and Chinese American history and the real Chinese fairy tales and the heroic tradition, and to demonstrate that a Chinese American could do all of this without sending whites up the wall or alienating anybody…”

Frank Chin (1940) American writer

On his novel Donald Duk (as quoted in ““FRANK CHIN: HIS OWN VOICE” https://resisters.com/by-frank-abe/frank-chin-his-own-voice/ in the Bloombury Review; September 1991)

History

“Spinoza accomplishes the synthesis of traditional philosophical components by means of breaking and shattering. It is useless to pursue the presuppositions of Spinozian philosophy if we do not look for them in the qualitative leap determined by his philosophy. The continuity of Spinozian thought with respect to the preceding course of the history of metaphysics consists of a radical discontinuity, one that exalts the utopia of consciousness and freedom (a patrimony of Western thought) in a project of liberation. The perspective of the world is not a utopia, the immanentism is not aesthetic, and the liberation is no longer artisanal, but all of this is presupposed, it is taken as a basis.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

World , History , Freedom

“Anything which is created must, sooner or later, die. If enlightenment were created in such a way, there would always be a possibility of ego reasserting itself, causing a return to the confused state. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it. In the Buddhist tradition the analogy of the sun appearing from behind the clouds is often used to explain the discovery of enlightenment. In meditation practice we clear away the confusion of ego in order to glimpse the awakened state. The absence of ignorance, of being crowded in, of paranoia, opens up a tremendous view of life. One discovers a different way of being.”

Chögyam Trungpa book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Sun , Life , Appearance , Way

“According to the Buddhist tradition, the spiritual path is the process of cutting through our confusion, of uncovering the awakened state of mind. When the awakened state of mind is crowded in by ego and its attendant paranoia, it takes on the character of an underlying instinct. So it is not a matter of building up the awakened state of mind, but rather of burning out the confusions which obstruct it. In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process we otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product, dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution.”

Chögyam Trungpa book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Dependency

“Buddhism, it may be said, finds religious authority not only in texts and institutions, but also in enlightened people. Certainly, those undersood as realized have occupied and important if not always well defined place within the early and developed tradition.”

Reginald Ray (1942) Buddhist teacher

[Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist Values and Orientations, Oxford University Press, 1999, 9780195350616, Preface, http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Buddhist%20Saints%20in%20India_A%20Study%20in%20Buddhist%20Values%20and%20Orientations_Reginald.pdf]

People

“Every artist who’s really into their work disappears into the creative flow. This is akin to some of the concentration-oriented meditations of the various sacred traditions. Images come in all different ways. You can get visions when you’re tripping on drugs, when you’re dreaming or in a hypnogogic state before dropping off to sleep, while listening to music or even waiting for the subway.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

High Times interview (2002)

Sleep , Waiting , Dreams , Music

“Magic is the science of the ancient magi; and the Christian religion, which silenced the counterfeit oracles and put a stop to the illusions of false gods, does, this notwithstanding, revere those mystic kings who came from the East, led by a star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle. They are elevated by tradition to the rank of kings, because magical initiation constitutes a true royalty; because also the great art of the magi is characterised by all adepts as the Royal Art, as the Holy Kingdom — Sanctum Regnum. The star which conducted the pilgrims is the same Burning Star which is met with in all initiations. For alchemists it is the sign of the quintessence, for magicians it is the Great Arcanum, for Kabalists the sacred pentagram.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Introduction
The History Of Magic (1860)

God , Religion , Silence , Star

“We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Speech to the United Parents Association, as quoted in The New York Times (6 April 1958)

School , Idea , Chance

“If there be any party which is more pledged than another to resist a policy of restrictive legislation, having for its object social coercion, that party is the Liberal party. (Cheers.) But liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right, (Hear, hear.) The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes. It has been the tradition of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the place where people can do more what they please than in any other country in the world.”

William Harcourt (1827–1904) British politician

Speech in Oxford town hall (30 December 1872), quoted in The Times (31 December 1872), p. 5

Country , People , Thinking , World

“Cleverness of speech was a quality which nearly all the young men of the time sought to attain, but Cato was singular in his keeping up the severe traditions of his ancestors in labouring with his own hands, eating a simple dinner, lighting no fire to cook his breakfast, wearing a plain dress, living in a mean house, and neither coveting superfluities nor courting their possessors.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Marcus Cato, sec. 4
Parallel Lives

Time , Housing , Light , Cooking

“Our cause is just our people are united from North to South; we have a tradition of undaunted struggle and the great sympathy and support of the fraternal socialist countries and progressive people all over the world. We shall win!”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"Appeal to Compatriots" (1966)
1960's

World , Support , People , Country

“The streak of rationality and questioning tradition too came early to him. Once a multicoloured book on the shelf at home caught his attention and he decided to read it, despite it being in Sanskrit, of which he understood very little. When Damodarpant discovered that his young son was reading the Aranyaka s he was enraged. There was a superstition that reading the Aranyaka s at home forebodes evil for the reader’s worldly life and they needed to be read in seclusion in the woods. This left a lasting question in Vinayak’s mind. How could someone as intelligent as his father believe in such superstitions?, he wondered. Mocking the belief, he continued reading the book without anyone’s knowledge and proved to himself that this was just a fanciful and concocted tale.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past

Home , Reading , Question , Intelligence

“What I do not see is the argument...that we ought somehow to go on a quite different issue, a purely economic issue, to this new extreme which seems, greatly to my regret, to have inspired part of my party. There are no longer the principles of Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Churchill. We are reverting to a form of neo-Cobdenism based upon the worst elements of the Manchester school, supported by aphorisms that would have done honour to that popular writer, Dr. Samuel Smiles. The paternalist elements and traditions of the Tory Party that come from its very roots are now unpopular. We are making a great error. It is because the people as a whole trusted those whom they regarded as their natural leaders to help them, support them and protect them that we have had the great authority in the past in our country.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1986/jan/21/shops-bill-hl-1#column_159 in the House of Lords (21 January 1986) on the Shops Bill that would have ended government regulation of Sunday shopping in England and Wales
Later life

School , Country , Making love , Past

“We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern, and less materialism in young people.”

Pete Buttigieg (1982) American politician

15 April 2019
Pete Buttigieg Presidential Campaign Announcement
C-SPAN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtAHTlogN-4
2019

People , Women , Food

“As an American, I always want to create work that reminds the world that people of colour have been great contributors to American history, culture, and tradition and that our stories exist and matter.”

Nilaja Sun

On her aim in “Interview with Nilaja Sun” https://www.voicemag.uk/interview/2818/interview-with-nilaja-sun (2017 Aug 6)

World , People , History

“I feel like a citizen of the world. I have now lived outside of India, where I grew up, longer than I lived in India. I have picked up traditions and even accents from India, the United States, and Denmark. I struggle with my cultural identity – where do I really come from? And even harder, where do I really belong? Everywhere or nowhere? Since many of my stories are about women trying to find their place in society, their cultural identities play a major role in driving their narrative.”

Amulya Malladi (1974) Indian writer

On her identity struggles in “Amulya Malladi: How I Write” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/amulya-malladi/ in The Writer (2018 May 22)

World , Feeling , Women

“Emergency was declared. Sanjay Gandhi took over. He created an army of morally corrupt, foreign-educated intellectuals with no track record. Their biggest strength was their unconditional loyalty to the Gandhi family. This tradition has continued. Loyalty over merit. Scheming over competence. Loot over contribution. Corruption grew. Guilt grew. Fear grew. With every scam, the family started making the intellectual wall bigger and bigger. Today this wall is full of scammers, crooks, agents, brokers, pimps, lobbyists, character assassins, land sharks etc. disguised as lawyers, journalists, NGOs, feminists, advisors, professors, socialists etc. Simply put, beneficiaries of Congress’s largesse.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Family , Fear , Education , Loyalty

“We are Muslims and we have an ethical tradition. We believe that the Quran is universal and one of the essential doctrines of it is to ensuring equality and justice without any discrimination between poor and rich.”

Hamza Tzortzis (1980) public speaker

"Tzortzis: Islam can cure the inequalities in the world" https://www.worldbulletin.net/islamic-world/tzortzis-islam-can-cure-the-inequalities-in-the-world-h137218.html, World Bulletin.net (May 24, 2014)

Universe , Justice

“I was determined to accept the invitation I had earlier received from General Jaruzelski to go to Poland. I always felt the greatest affection and admiration for this nation of indomitable patriots, whose traditions and distinctive identity the Prussians, Austrians and Russians (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and the Nazis and communists (in the twentieth century) had sought vainly to extinguish. I could not forget the Polish airmen who had fought with the RAF against Nazism, and how a war begun over the freedom of Poland had ended leaving them trapped under tyranny.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 777

War , Freedom , Forgetting

“I thought back to Europe being invaded by the Nazi army with great sadness … For me, seeing Europe had been everything. When I came back to Cuba, I was taken aback by its nature, by the traditions of the Blacks, and by the transculturation of its African and Catholic religions. And so I began to orientate my paintings toward the African.”

Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) Cuban artist

On painting after returning to Cuba in “Wifredo Lam: Man of the World” https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/wifredo-lam-man-of-world (Tate; 2016 Aug 16)

Religion , Sadness , Painting , Nature

“In fact, this conclusion is merely a restatement of what was a matter of consensus until a few years ago. This time it is supported by a bundle of evidence, but it had been known all along. It is only recently that politically motivated academics have manufactured doubts concerning this coherent and well-attested tradition. And it is not on the strength of arguments, but exclusively through their grip on the media, that they temporarily managed to create the impression that the Hindu case was built on myth and concoction.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Motivation , Support , Time

“There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn’t they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it’s the same old lesson: everything in this life—I repeat, everything—is more trouble than it’s worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There’s a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Pain , Time , Personality , Children

“The earliest body of gospel tradition, represented by Mark no less than by the primitive non-Marcan document embodied in the first and third gospels, begins, not with the birth and childhood of Jesus, but with his baptism; and this order of accretion of gospel matter is faithfully reflected in the time order of the invention of feasts. The great church adopted Christmas much later than Epiphany; and before the 5th century there was no general consensus of opinion as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on the 6th of January, or the 25th of March, or the 25th of December.”

Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare (1856–1924) British orientalist

[Christmas, Wikisource, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Christmas]

Childhood , Christmas , Birth , Time

“Oral tradition is really how Chicano literature came to be. I was not exposed to the written word, but I had the greatest teacher. I always tell people that my mother was my inspiration because she was the best chismosa, and she had the best stories. And if anyone taught me about drama, it was my mother because she knew how to tell a story. And my grandfather also told stories. One of the reasons why I waned to be a writer was because I was fascinated by stories of La Llorona, supernatural stories and things like that and I love hearing chisme (gossip)…”

Josefina Lopez (1969) American playwright

On her earliest influences in “JOSEFINA LÓPEZ – IN HER OWN WORDS” http://latinopia.com/latino-theater/josefina-lopez/ in Latinopia (2010 Mar 6)

People , Teachers , Literature , Love

“Perestroika did not give the people prosperity, something they expected of me, as head of state, based on an ingrained, traditional feeling of dependence. But I did not promise that. I urged people to use this new-found freedom to create prosperity, personal and social prosperity, with their own hands and minds, according to the abilities of each.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, Memoirs (1995)

Dependency , Freedom , Personality , People

“National Socialism derives from each of the two camps the pure idea that characterizes it, national resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teaching of Marxism.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Interview by Hanns Johst in Frankforter Volksblatt (January 27, 1934), quoted in David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (New York: NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), p. 57
1930s

Idea

“There’s a tradition of scientists approaching senility to come up with grand, improbable theories. Wolfram is unusual in that he’s doing this in his 40s.”

Stephen Wolfram (1959) British-American computer scientist, mathematician, physicist, writer and businessman

Freeman Dyson cited in: " Living a Paradigm Shift: Looking Back on Reactions to A New Kind of Science http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/05/living-a-paradigm-shift-looking-back-on-reactions-to-a-new-kind-of-science/," blog.stephenwolfram.com May 11, 2012

“Laws without supporting moral conventions invite crime, but much more importantly, they spur the growth of an expedient, amoral attitude. In our kind of society - with its absence of pre-capitalist traditions - the only way to do away with training devices is to change the laws and their enforcement so that, unlike the current income tax, they do not depend upon individual integrity. Another way is to pass only laws that result from great social movements with concomitant changes in moral codes, but there is no such movement underway in any area of American society today.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

"Diagnosis of Our Moral Uneasiness"
Power, Politics, and People (1963)

Dependency , Law , Support , Way

“Talk you of tradition in middle of singularity.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Sister Seventh twisted her head around to look out the windows at the foggy evening drizzle beyond. “Perplexity maximizes. Not understand singularity is discontinuity with all tradition? Revolution is necessary; deconstruct the old, ring in the new. Before, I questioned your sapience. Now, your sanity questionable; sapience not. Only sapient organism could exhibit superlative irrationality!”
Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 144)

“The advice to any young poet is to embrace your freedom and not feel constrained to write in one particular way or only about one particular topic. If they’re Latino poets, I would encourage them not only to read widely, but also to read Latino poetry, to familiarize themselves with their particular tradition within American literature…”

Francisco Aragón (1968) poet

On his advice to Latino poets in “Interview with Francisco Aragón: Latino Poetry From All Its Perspectives” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/2010/09/16/interview-with-francisco-aragon-latino-poetry-from-all-its-perspectives/ in Sampsonia Way (2010 Sept 16)

Reading , Freedom , Literature , Way

“I chose to rewrite it in poetry because the original Ramayana was in poetry- the fact is, it’s sort of been corrupted into prose. In its original form it was an epic poem rather like the Iliad or works of that sort. Rather than traditional poetry, it was a verse novel, without a traditional structure. What I most wanted to do was to preserve the essential musicality of the lines. Especially as the Ramayana like so many stories, was based on a fundamentally oral tradition.”

Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster

On reworking the Ramayana in “An Interview With Daljit Nagra” https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/an-interview-with-daljit-nagra/ in The Bubble (2014 Sept 17)

Music

“Man is not advised to sit down and fold his hands and roll his eyes piously toward the traditional source of good, and allow himself to be eaten up by tigers and ticks. And no one who reads honestly what has gone before can come to any such conclusion. Anything can be misrepresented if the one who attempts it is ingenious and determined enough. It is recognised that this is not an ideal world, and that it is impossible for any being to act among the evil as he would be able to act among the good. It is simply insisted that man shall ignore the urgings of his lower nature and do the best he can in the circumstances. Men do not and cannot act ideally toward their fellow-men, but they think they act nobly when they do the best they can. And, oh, if man would only try to be just to his fellow-races, what a different world he could make of it! If one is disposed to be wayward, it is astonishing what an array of excuses even the simpleton can scrape up in defence of himself. But if one is resolved on that higher life, ever held up to us by the better elements of our nature, it is also surprising how successful one can be, even among adverse conditions.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Perils of Over-population, pp. 161–162

Reading , Success , Nature , Thinking

“The tradition that the universe was originally constructed and has ever since been, and is to-day, guided by the cerebral processes of an all-wise brain, is responsible for it all. Blinded by this inheritance, human beings condone the most palpable defects in the economies of the universe—limitations which, it is not violent to say, if possessed by a fellow human being, would be characterized as those of an imbecile.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, p. 87

Universe

“Religion is a strictly human infirmity. No other animal has it. It originated far back in the past, when the human world was young and the mind just beginning to open. It is an anachronism today, with our science and understanding. It survives solely by the force of tradition.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Source of Religion", International Socialist Review, Vol. 16, Iss. 12, Jun. 1916

Religion , Understanding , Past , Animals

“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 … Let us have no fear of the future.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Source: Speech in the House of Commons, November 29, 1944 "Debate on the Address" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/nov/29/debate-on-the-address#column_31.

Future , World , Love , Fear

“Our democracy is not in peril—we do not live in a democracy. The image of our democracy is in peril. The deep state—the generals, bankers, corporatists, lobbyists, intelligence chiefs, government bureaucrats and technocrats—is intent on salvaging the brand. It is hard to trumpet yourself as the world’s guardian of freedom and liberty with Donald Trump blathering on incoherently about himself, inciting racist violence, insulting our traditional allies along with the courts, the press and Congress, tweeting misspelled inanities and impulsively denouncing or sabotaging bipartisan domestic and foreign policy.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Enemy Within" (2019)

World , Intelligence , Democracy , Freedom

“There is a tradition of popular struggle in the United States that has been downplayed and ignored. It ebbs and flows but never ceases. Moved by a combination of anger and hope, ordinary people have organized, agitated, demonstrated, and engaged in electoral challenges, civil disobedience, strikes, sit-ins, takeovers, boycotts, and sometimes violent clashes with the authorities - for better wages and work conditions, a safer environment, racial and gender justice, and peace and nonintervention abroad. Against the heaviest odds, they have suffered many defeats but won some important victories, forcible extracting concessions and imposing reforms upon resistant rulers.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 320

Peace , Anger , Justice , Victory

“I was trained in the old tradition! We found our strength in the basic verities, to which you, as a patrician, must surely subscribe. Am I right in this?”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

“Absolutely, and in all respects!” declared Cugel. “Recognizing, of course, that these fundamental verities vary from region to region, and even from person to person.”
Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), Cugel's Saga (1983), Chapter 3, section 2, "Faucelme"

Training

“It is a good idea not to make up our minds prematurely on this issue. It is probably best not to let our personal preferences influence the decision. Rather, in the long tradition of successful science, we should permit nature to reveal the truth to us.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 24, “Gott and the Turtles” (p. 351)

Success , Personality , Nature , Truth

“This defective approach to scholarship was suffered by different categories of colonial student. Many of them had been handpicked and, so to say, carried certificates of worthiness with them. These were considered fit to become enlightened servants of the colonial administration. The process by which this category of student became fit usually started at an early age, for not infrequently they had lost contact early in life with their traditional background. By reason of their lack of contact with their own roots, they became prone to accept some theory of universalism, provided it was expressed in vague, mellifluous terms. Armed with their universalism, they carried away from their university courses an attitude entirely at variance with the concrete reality of their people and their struggle.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Consciencism (1964), Introduction

Suffering , People , Universe , Reality

“My country has been on the verge of socialism, which has put us in a state of widespread corruption, serious economic recession, high criminality rates and unending attacks on the family and religious values that underpin our traditions.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Speech at the at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil http://statements.unmeetings.org/GA74/BR_EN.pdf. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).

Family , Country

“All the great religions posit the idea of a further revelation to be given by a future Teacher. Christians hope for the return of the Christ, the Buddhists look for the coming of another Buddha (the Lord Maitreya), while Moslems await the appearance of the Imam Mahdi, the Hindus a reincarnation of Krishna, and the Jews the Messiah. Students of the esoteric tradition know these as different names for one and the same individual, the World Teacher, the head of the Spiritual Hierarchy of Masters, and they look for His imminent return now.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. I (1986)

Religion , Future , Hope , Teachers

“I grew up being aware that I was Southern, and that being a very important thing for me. And being drawn to short story writers, like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty—the surroundings in their stories were so familiar to me, the whole Southern Gothic thing. That world only existed in that part of the country. It’s going to inform the personality of the songs. In a lot of my songwriting, I mention towns and places. It’s a culturally traditional thing in the South to tell stories.”

Lucinda Williams (1953) American rock, folk, blues, and country music singer, songwriter and musician

On how her Southern heritage informed her songwriting in “Lucinda Williams On the Hard and Sedulous Road to Major Label Success” https://sheshredsmag.com/interview-lucinda-williams/ in She Shreds (2017 Mar 6)

World , Personality , Parting , Country

“Is the Gospel story historically true? Is it a mystical tale of great beauty and of real teaching value but nevertheless of no vital import to the intelligent men and women of today, who pride themselves on their reasoning powers and upon their independence of ancient mental trammels and of old and dusty traditions? As to the perfection of the portrayed character of Christ there is never any question. The enemies of Christianity admit His uniqueness, His basic profundity and His understanding of the hearts of men. They recognise the intelligence of His ideas and sponsor them in their own philosophies. The developments which the Carpenter of Nazareth brought about in the fabric of human life, His social and economic ideals, and the beauty of the civilisation which could be founded upon the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount are frequently emphasised by many who refuse to recognise His mission as an expression of divinity.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One

Understanding , Question , Beauty , Intelligence

“We are co-partners in a long and rich religious history -- the Judeo-Christian traditions. Many blacks and Jews have a shared passion for social justice at home and peace abroad. We must seek a revival of the spirit, inspired by a new vision and new possibilities. We must return to higher ground. We are bound by Moses and Jesus, but also connected with Islam and Mohammed. These three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were all born in the revered and holy city of Jerusalem.”

Jesse Jackson (1941) African-American civil rights activist and politician

Address to the Democratic National Convention, 1984

Home , Peace , Religion , Justice

“Today, however, a trend away from traditional standards of propriety begins to be in evidence. Our Court has been indoctrinated and brainwashed by left-wing pressure groups. The Court is out of step with the American people. We see Justices of the Supreme Court banqueted and honored by left-wing Communist-front organizations militantly interested in legislation on which the Supreme Court must pass.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

Congressional Record https://books.google.fr/books?id=WhPOxPiWV2YC&q=%22indoctrinated+and+brainwashed+by+left-wing+pressure+groups.%22&dq=%22indoctrinated+and+brainwashed+by+left-wing+pressure+groups.%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiodS__tjkAhWLnhQKHSqcBdoQ6AEIcjAJ, 1956
1950s

Justice , People

“From my early youth, since I attained the age of puberty before I was twenty, until the present time when I am over fifty, I have ever recklessly launched out into the midst of these ocean depths, I have ever bravely embarked on this open sea, throwing aside all craven caution; I have poked into every dark recess, I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss, I have scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every community. All this have I done that I might 68 distinguish between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

Whenever I meet one of the Batiniyah, I like to study his creed; whenever I meet one of the Zahiriyah, I want to know the essentials of his belief. If it is a philosopher, I try to become acquainted with the essence of his philosophy; if a scholastic theologian I busy myself in examining his theological reasoning; if a Sufi, I yearn to fathom the secret of his mysticism; if an ascetic (muta'ahhid) , I investigate the basis of his ascetic practices; if one ofthe Zanadiqah or Mu'attilah, I look beneath the surface to discover the reasons for his bold adoption of such a creed.
The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307, p: 20-21

Time , Communication , Problem , Falseness

“The loss of many traditional jobs in everything from art to healthcare will partly be offset by the creation of new human jobs. GPs who focus on diagnosing known diseases and administering familiar treatments will probably be replaced by AI doctors. But precisely because of that, there will be much more money to pay human doctors and lab assistants to do groundbreaking research and develop new medicines or surgical procedures.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Money , Loss , Art , Disease

“The ingredients are always the same: from the very beginnings, the Guess women have always been feminine, sensual, self-confident, independent, free and happy. This image is very far from that of traditional models, often too skinny and sad. Our campaigns express an intense yet smiling seduction, strongly different from the vulgarity dominating today’s world.”

Paul Marciano (1952) American fashion designer

Interview with Paul Marciano for Grazia magazine, May 25 2017 https://guessjournal.com/interviews/interview-paul-marciano/

Confidence , Smile , Self-confidence , World

“It is a good policy, so long as there are no considerable bases of operations and invulnerable places, to take no prisoners. Survivors ought to be set free. The wounded should be cared for with all possible resources at the time of the action. Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 3. Guerrilla Tactics

Time , People

“But the weird thing is that many of the people who are outraged by benign nationalism or the benign pan-nationalism that is pride in Western civilization take no umbrage when someone from Iran or China says they think their civilization is best. This of course is a manifestation of the ancient cult of identitarianism, which the best traditions of the West have battled internally at great cost for thousands of years. Saying Western civilization is great hurts the feelings of some people invested in some other source of identity. And it hurts the feelings of some Westerners because they think it’s a sign of enlightenment to get offended on other people’s behalf or to denigrate the society that gave them their soap box.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2019, What's So Great About Western Civilization (2019)

Hurt , Box , People , Thinking

“Your son was in your own tradition.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

“Better, I hope,” said the old man. “There would be little sense to existence, did boys have no chance to be more than their fathers.”
Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 18 (p. 150)

“The forfeiture is exactly the sort of thing which has landed us where we are : where intellectual inquiry is shut out; where our tradition are not examined and reassessed and where as a consequence there is no dialogue.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

About the book banning of Ram Swarup's Understanding Islam through Hadis. quoted from Koenraad Elst. Ayodhya and after: issues before Hindu society. 1991. Ch. 12.

“In Taiwan, we have cultural heritage from (Mainland) China, Japan, Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, which has resulted in a deep melting pot of cultures and an acceptance of many cultures. Against that background, we can see diverse traditional arts in Taiwan.”

Hsiao Tsung-huang Taiwanese politician

Hsiao Tsung-huang (2019) cited in " A country's performing arts reflect its democracy: culture minister http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aedu/201907200010.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 20 July 2019

Art

“Tradition or myth… directly indicates that the Ailas (or Aryans) entered India from the mid-Himalayan region.”

F. E. Pargiter (1852–1927) British civil servant and orientalist

Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (1962)

“Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aila or Aryan invasion of India from Afghanistan, nor of any gradual advance from thence eastwards.”

F. E. Pargiter (1852–1927) British civil servant and orientalist

Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (1962)

“Pargiter’s examination of traditional history produces a picture which tallies perfectly with our theory. He describes the expansion of the Aryans from the region around Allahabad into the northwest and beyond in great detail.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 8 : Misinterpretations of Rigvedic History

History

“But the same argument cannot hold for a post-Rigvedic movement from the northwest into the rest of India: it is clear that a full-fledged literary tradition had certainly started with the Rigveda at least; and any post-Rigvedic movements should be reflected in the later texts.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 8 : Misinterpretations of Rigvedic History

“A state of thievocracy is promoted because it permits politically connected taskmasters to redirect wealth to those deemed worthier by the state. In this sense, slavery is the socialization of labor and property, imposed to make the populace subservient to an institutionalized authority that often preaches equalitarianism and altruism but practices a slavery-enriched militarism. To the far statist Left and their slavocracy comrades, individuals have no ownership rights—so humans can be beasts of burden or simply be exterminated in cleansing bouts of genocide. Many leaders of the Democratic Party are still tied to this slavocracy-socialist tradition as a means to steal wages and assets from the citizenry as well as corrode free speech, due process and the presumption of innocence.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

p 484
Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019)

Sense , Wealth , Making love

“The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Quoted from F. Capra, The Tao of Physics.

War , Idea

“If there is any party in the State which, by its traditions and its history, is entitled to put in the forefront of its work and its programme the betterment of the conditions of life of the working classes, it is our party. (Hear, hear.) We were fighting the battle of the factory hand long before he had a vote; and when the Liberals were tied up in the shackles of laissez faire we were speaking in favour of the combination of working men, long before the Liberals had thought of the subject. It is more than 50 years ago that Disraeli was calling the attention of the country to housing and health questions, and they mocked him with the policy of sewage. The sanitation, or let me say the spiritual sanitation, of our people should have the first call on the historic Tory Party. It is just in the measure as we can convince the country, by the service we give the country, that we are as genuinely interested in these questions and as generally prepared to sacrifice ourselves in solving these questions as any member of the Labour Party, that the country will trust us and that the country will return us again into power.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to a meeting of the Unionist Party at the Hotel Cecil (11 February 1924), quoted in The Times (12 February 1924), p. 17
1924

Housing , History , Country , Question

“There was therefore no inevitability in the emergence of an all male priesthood. The prolonged ideological struggle of the Hebrew tribes against the worship of Canaanite deities and especially the persistence of a cult of the fertility-goddess Asherah must have hardened the emphasis on male cultic leadership and the tendency toward mysogyny, which fully emerged only in the post-exilic period. Whatever the causes, the Old Testament male priesthood represented a radical break with millennia of tradition and with the practices of neighboring peoples. This new order under the all-powerful God proclaimed to Hebrews and to all those, who took the Bible as their moral and religious guide that women cannot speak to God.”

Gerda Lerner (1920–2013) Austrian-American women's history scholar

The Creation of Patriarchy, ch. 8, pp. 178-179
The Creation of Patriarchy (1986)

God , People , Women

“I believe there is another reason also why Spinoza seems to me so pre-eminent: that in spite of being traditional, or because he was not distracted by side issues, he was an entire and majestic mind, a singularly consecrated soul. All these trite dogmas and problems lived in him and were the natural channels for his intuitions and emotions. That is what I feel to make a real philosopher and not, what we are condemned to be, professors of the philosophy of other people, or of our own opinions.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

George Santayana, in his letter to Harry Austryn Wolfson, 16 June 1934
S - Z, George Santayana

Soul , People , Nature , Problem

“The (respective) position of Judaism toward Spinoza coincides with the (respective) position of Europe toward him. However, it does not completely coincide with it. Spinoza played a special role in the Judaism of the past century. When what mattered was the justification of the breakup of the Jewish tradition and the entry of the Jews into modern Europe, perhaps no better, but certainly no more convenient, reference offered itself than the appeal to Spinoza. Who was more suitable for undertaking the justification of modern Judaism before the tribunal of the Jewish tradition, on the one hand, and before the tribunal of modern Europe, on the other, than Spinoza, who, as was almost universally recognized, was a classical exponent of this Europe and who, as one did not grow weary of at least asserting, had thought his thoughts in the spirit of Judaism and by means of Judaism? It is clear that, at a time when modern Europe has been shaken to its foundations, one can no longer justify oneself before this Europe for the sake of Judaism, nor before Judaism for the sake of this Europe, supposing one still wants to do so.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Leo Strauss, Das Testament Spinozas (1932) [original in German]
S - Z

Universe , Past , Time

“The Jewish tradition has two distinct tendencies: the more fundamental one, represented by the philosophers and poets and scholars who were interested only in Jewish issues and in the Jewish Weltanschauung; and the other tendency associated with great figures such as Spinoza or Einstein, and to a certain extent also Heinrich Heine, and which applied the traditions of Jewish thinking to other cultures, including German culture, and to other issues. It is not difficult to see how a double identity developed among Jews.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Daniel Barenboim, " Germans, Jews, and Music https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/03/29/germans-jews-and-music/" (The New York Review of Books, 29 March 2001)
A - F, Daniel Barenboim

Thinking

“My cousin Zygmunt found a distant relative in Italy, Professor Vettolani, who works as an astrophysicist in Bologna. When we contacted him, it turned out that our family traditions are quite compatible. So I think we are really connected by Etruscan blood. Although Zygmunt, who is a tireless researcher of family history, has several other theories about our origins. It turns out that in Italy there were two, no longer existing, settlements called Vetulani: one in Lazio, and the other in Tuscany, near Pisa.”

Zygmunt Vetulani (1950) Polish mathematician

Jerzy Vetulani, Mózg i błazen, Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2015, ISBN 978-83-8049-092-5, p. 7.

Distant , Family , Thinking , History

“He was definitely an apologist of Hinduism, a defender of Hindu values and traditions (including the caste system) against the numerous misconceptions and prejudices common among the Western and anglicized-Indian audiences.”

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) Ceylon-American art historian

Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743

“Garg works in the great tradition of Wilfred Funk and Norman Lewis… Garg, however, is more fun.”

Anu Garg (1967) Indian author

Minneapolis Star Tribune
Robert
Armstrong
2003-02-23
Just the right books for when words fail you

“His stewardship of the upper house proved his merit for presidentship. His ruling in the Rajya Sabha, blending humour and firmness established him as a champion of Parliamentary dignity and traditions.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.233.

Housing

“He had great compassion for the poor. He often voiced disquiet over the fact that minimum standards of nutrition, clothing, shelter, medical care and education were beyond the reach of many sections of the people of India and called for determined efforts to address these deficiencies. He was also deeply concerned about the weakening of traditional values that have enabled diverse Indians live together in peace for centuries.”

Neelam Sanjiva Reddy (1913–1996) sixth President of India

Speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at the concluding function of the centenary celebrations of the former President of India, Dr. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy

Peace , Clothes , People , Education