A precedent embalms a principle.
A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.
As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.
I'm an old-fashioned guy… I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something.
In America nothing dies easier than tradition.
It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor.
People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.
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.
The dead govern the living.
There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.
To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a ''mummified'' form.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.
Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.
Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.
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.