"Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human."
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."
— Jacques Barzun

"Tradition is a guide and not a jailer. "
— W. Somerset Maugham

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead."
— T.S. Eliot (The Sacred Wood)

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead,
traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
— Jaroslav Pelikan (The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities)

"Tradition is a guide and not a jailer. "
— W. Somerset Maugham

"Touching your cap to the squire may be damn bad for the squire, but it's damn good for you."
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"It's wonderful to me that bees have this simple, age-old thing going on."
— Peter Fonda

"Golden eagles don`t mate with bald eagles, deer don`t mate with antelope, gray wolves don`t mate with red wolves. Just look at domesticated animals, at mongrel dogs, and mixed breed horses, and you`ll know the Great Mystery didn`t intend them to be that way. We weakened the species and introduced disease by mixing what should be kept seperate. Among humans, intermarriage weakens the respect people have for themselves and for their traditions. It undermines clarity of spirit and mind."
— Russell Means (Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means)

"“When I observe Gram, I see how fragile the notion of tradition can be. If I take my eyes off the way she kneads her Easter bread, or if I fail to study the way she sews a seam in suede, or if I lose the mental image I have of her when she negotiates a better deal with a button salesman, somehow, the very essence of her will be lost. When she goes, the responsibility for carrying on will fall to me. My mother says I’m the keeper of the flame, because I work here, and because I choose to live here. A flame is a very fragile thing, too, and there are times when I wonder if I’m the on who can keep it going.”
"
— Adriana Trigiani

"Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted. Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely. This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other. The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated. And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence."
— N. Scott Momaday

""As I wrote 'The Christmas Lamp' I realized that tradition is priceless, whether you have a small family, a large family, or no family.
Tradition doesn't have to be logical; it only has to emphasize the light of Christ and his everlasting love."
"
— Lori Copeland (The Christmas Lamp: A Novella)

"… in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of Éire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define.

Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be.

And by the way of the rural what may we say?
A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say.

Iohannes Scottus Ériugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp.

(Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled)"
— Richard McSweeney (Hearing in the Write)

"Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves."
— Bertrand Russell

"Theocracy in the West is a kingdom of God where authority vests in specially ordained priests who exercise it on behalf of God. This is not the conception of Islam. Islam has no priesthood and, therefore no special agents of God to administer the law which expresses His will."
— Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi

"The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive."
— Terry Eagleton (Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate)

"To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)

"Those who feel guilty contemplating "betraying" the tradition they love by acknowledging their disapproval of elements within it should reflect on the fact that the very tradition to which they are so loyal—the "eternal" tradition introduced to them in their youth—is in fact the evolved product of many adjustments firmly but delicately made by earlier lovers of the same tradition."
— Daniel C. Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon)

"There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past."
— Carlos Fuentes (Myself with Others: Selected Essays)