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Traditions Quotes

Browse 119 quotes about Traditions.

Traditions Quotes

“I Don't Know (The Sonnet) What does winning or losing mean, I don't know. What does kill or be killed mean, I don't know. What does 'my culture, your culture' mean, I don't know. What does 'my nation, your nation' mean, I don't know. What does 'my people, your people' mean, I don't know. What does my life and your life mean, I don't know. I only know, we are not some mindless mouthpiece for our dead ancestors and their shortsightedness. It is time we bury the divisionism that they passed on to us tradition and heritage.”

“Halkat Humans (The Sonnet) The history of human progress, Is the history of halkat* humans. Only the *loco make the earth civilized, By growing out of habits and traditions. Habits of yesterday are a gutter of biases, Hence they ain't the right habits of today. Let us not confuse them as modern identity, Let us not endorse them throwing reason away, Traditions born of bigotry and ignorance, Are hardly a measure of civilization. Measure of civilization is an expanding spirit, One that ever evolves discarding superstition. Turn your heart into a khichdi (fusion) of cultures, And behold o mighty human, as all division disappears.”

“CopyCats are Conformists — both conventional and predictable. They follow traditions and typically do what’s expected of them. Creatives are Contrarians — they’re not rude by default; they just know all traditions were once original; so why not make new ones?”

“Ultimately, the great truths of family history don't live in any book. They live in the hearts and minds of the living descendants. They live in the way we conduct our lives, in the passing of traditions and values to those who will follow.”

“Traditions, with all their folksy redolences, are relatively safe matters for scholars to speculate about. Maps and nautical charts on the other hand -- especially accurate, sophisticated maps of the kind used by Guzarate to chart Vasco da Gama's course from Malindi to Calicut in 1498 -- are quite another matter. If maps have indeed come down to us containing recognizable representations of Ice Age topography -- as arguably may be the case with the depictions of India and of the long-submerged Sundaland peninsula by Cantino and Reinal and with the depiction of the 'Golden Chersonese' by Ptolemy -- then prehistory cannot be as it has hitherto been presented to us. If they are what they seem, such maps mean a lost civilization. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“All that remains is for me to make a sad observation. Like so many other creatures that once embellished life and brought hope, house spirits have vanished and with them the souls of our houses have fled, never to return. Homes have sunk into anonymity; building rituals have almost entirely disappeared; prefabricated industrial materials have replaced the quest for attentive selection of materials that were wrought with love; the meaning of ornaments are no longer known and the moon, sun, stars and crosses have disappeared from our facades; radiators have replaced the hearth and stove; our corners have become little more than dust collectors; and there is no longer anything concealed beneath our thresholds. We have transformed into rootless wanderers with no fire or place to call our own. The individual no longer has any attachment to a house that has been passed down for generations. In loosing all of this, we have lost a piece of ourselves, one of our most solid anchors, and like dead leaves carried by the wind, we settle one day here, another day there, driven by the whims of our professions, but we no longer bring the embers from our hearths with us, and the surviving spirits weep in abandoned houses.”

“Sometimes painfully lost people can teach us lessons that we didn't think we needed to know, or be reminded of---the more history changes, the more it stays the same.”

“Ah, the Lunar New Year —a time of vibrant traditions, sumptuous feasts, and ancient wisdom. Amidst the festive dragon dances and glittering lanterns, it whispers profound life lessons. Like the patient blooming of cherry blossoms, it teaches resilience in adversity. The red envelopes, symbols of generosity, remind us of the joy of giving. And in the gathering of loved ones, it celebrates the power of community and connection”

“Happy Lunar New Year! It's time to channel your inner dragon and breathe fire into your goals. Let's kick off this year with a fire of confidence, fierce determination, and unstoppable energy. Here's to embracing change, chasing dreams, and devouring all the delicious dumplings along the way. Wishing you a year filled with laughter, prosperity, and unforgettable adventures. Let's make this Year of the Dragon one to remember! Dragon energy, activate!”

“Your life would have been very different if you'd been raised here." "How so?" "Well, for starters, you would have been given two very specific names. The first would be an official name that ended in -nomiya. It means imperial member." Right. His name. Makotonomiya. "The second would be a personal name. Scholars would have drafted a list of options. I would have picked one, then sent my choice to the emperor. For approval, of course." "Of course." "The emperor would have written your anointed names on washi paper and placed them in a lacquered cypress box with the gold chrysanthemum emblem. The box would have been sent to the palace, then to the hospital and placed on your pillow, right next to your head," he says in a low, warm voice. "After the naming ritual, you would have been bathed in a cedar tub." "That sounds nice." He swirls the liquid in his glass. "A floral emblem would have been chosen for you." My breath makes little clouds. The fireworks are over. Near the pond, fireflies appear, dancing over the water in concentric circles. It's cold. Even so, I'm not ready to go inside yet. "What would you have chosen?" My eyes are as wide as saucers. My heart is open. I want this to work so badly. I want my life to be different. Better. More whole. Superhero epic. "I chose the purple iris." The vase in my room----a single iris. He thought about me. He cares. My eyes sting. I bat my lashes against the tears. If he asks about them, I'll say it's the breeze. "It stands for purity and wisdom.”

“Another point of interest about the Tiahuanaco [in Bolivia] monoliths is that their garments from the waist down are patterned in the form of fish scales. Here, too, is a parallel to the Apkallus--the bearded, "fish-garbed figures" who brought high civilization to Mesopotamia [...]. Nor is it as though bearded figures are missing from the repertoire of Tiahuanaco. Two have survived, and one on the pillar in the semi-subterranean temple has been identified since time immemorial with the great civilizing deity Kon-Tiki Viracocha, [...] who is described in multiple myths and traditions as being white skinned and bearded.”

“Social development is quite like memory consolidation in the human brain. Important memories meticulously get imprinted from old dying neurons to newly born neurons and unimportant memories fade away while making way for new memories to flourish. Such should be the course of societal progress.”

“The "Garcilaso" mentioned by Markham is the chronicler Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, a heritage that gave him unique access to genuine Inca traditions, particularly since he was born and brought up in Cuzco and spoke Quechua, the language of the Incas, as his mother tongue. Had the megalithic elements of Sacsayhuaman been recent work, done in the century before Garcilaso's birth, there should have been fresh and clear memories, even eye-witness accounts, of so magnificent an achievement. But Garcilaso reports nothing of the sort and instead can only offer magic as an explanation for what he describes as 'an ever greater enigma than the seven wonders of the world.”

“Darwin is often taken as the enemy of tradition, but traditions are just those social institutions that have weathered selective pressures. The longer a thing has survived, the more likely that it serves an adaptive purpose; “racism” is held up as the cardinal modern sin, but ethnocentrism is deeply rooted in our brain structure, therefore ancient. [...] Natural selection is anything but the liberal’s friend. Darwinism is the nail in the coffin of the Enlightenment, which is why you’re not allowed to apply it to anything except bees and cuttlefish.”

“Our society faces the increasing call to deconstruct its stabilizing traditions to include smaller and smaller numbers of people who do not or will not fit into the categories upon which even our perceptions are based. This is not a good thing. Each person's private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution, because revolutions are destabilizing and dangerous.”

“Old and New (The Sonnet) Old is not necessarily gold, New is not necessarily cool. Stereotypes without scrutiny, Sustain only a society of fools. Answer to one stereotype is not another, Answer to one assumption is not another. To make assumption is not wrong but, To assume it as truth supreme is rhubarb. Perception is all about assumption, Our brain hasn't evolved to observe reality. Biases prevent the observation of biases, unless, You are hellbent to expand across comfort and luxury. Stereotypes are archetypes of self-preservation. Look outside the self and you'll find assimilation.”

“When distinction of any kind, even intellectual distinction, is somehow resented as a betrayal of the American spirit of equal opportunity for all, the result must be just this terror of individualistic impulses setting us apart, either above or below our neighbours; just this determination to obey without questioning and to subscribe with passion to the conventions and traditions. The dilemma becomes a very real one: How can this sense of democratic equality be made compatible with respect for exceptional personalities or great minds? How can democracy, as we understand it today, with its iron repression of the free spirit, its monotonous standardisation of everything, learn to cherish an intellectual aristocracy without which any nation runs the risk of becoming a civilisation of the commonplace and the second-rate?”

“MOTHER TIME: Every New Year is the same. Every day, every second is too for that matter. But when we deliver them in secret, when another year just begins as a matter of fact, it's easy to fail to appreciate what a miracle it is to have more time. So, I suppose, it feels different right now because this time you're paying attention”