Traditional Quotes - Page 31

• Presently it appears that people are mainly concerned with being well rested. Those capable of uninterrupted sleep are much admired. Unconsciousness is in great demand. This is the day of the milligram. The rigors of learning how to do long division have been a traditional part of childhood, just like learning to smoke. In fact, as far as I am concerned, the two go hand in hand. Any child who cannot do long division by himself does not deserve to smoke.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Children, Sleep, Hands

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• The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.

  Jacques Derrida

  Writing, Language, Statements

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• A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Environment, Fallacy, Rely

  Vladimir Nabokov (2016). “Lolita”, p.132, Hamilton Books

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• There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.

  John Dewey

  Educational, Facts, Reason Why

  John Dewey (1998). “Experience and Education, 60th Anniversary Edition”, p.46, Kappa Delta Pi

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• I knew what was like to finally be seduced by the thing you hunted. Mine just happened to be a more traditional seduction. Okay, at least I was still among the living.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Seduction, Okay, Stills

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2011). “Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15”, p.1215, Penguin

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• Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalizations.

  Aldous Huxley

  Stupid, Class, May

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2000). “Complete Essays: 1920-1925”, Ivan R Dee

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• Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection.

  Terry Pratchett

  Men, Years, Patents

  "Small Gods (Discworld, Book 13)". Book by Terry Pratchett (p. 307), 1992.

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• Right," said Fat Charlie conversationally. "You realize, of course, that this means war." It was the traditional war cry of a rabbit when pushed too far.

  Neil Gaiman

  War, Mean, Rabbits

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• [Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Minorities, Taught

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, Anchor

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• The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  World Government, Historical, Would Be

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• In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.

  Martha Stout

  Lying, Men, Hunting

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• Minor magicians take pains to fit this traditional wizardly bill. By contrast, the really powerful magicians take pleasure in looking like accountants.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Pain, Powerful, Bills

  Jonathan Stroud (2003). “Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book One: Amulet of Samarkand, The (International Edition)”, Disney-Hyperion

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• She had told him that she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways. Ways that made him believe that he could do anything. Anything she needed or wanted him to do. Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.

  Jacquelyn Frank

  Believe, Phrases, Way

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• Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.

  Daniel Handler

  Mean, Years, Gold

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• We shortchange ourselves by regarding religious faith as a matter of intellectual assent. This is a modern aberration; the traditional Christian view is far more holistic, regarding faith as a whole-body experience. Sometimes it is, as W.H. Auden described it, 'a matter of choosing what is difficult all one's days as if it were easy.

  Kathleen Norris

  Christian, Religious, Views

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• The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it

  Mark Twain

  Logic, Tradition, Harder

  1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch.5.

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• I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.

  Cornel West

  Morning, Struggle, Recovery

  bell hooks, Cornel West (2016). “Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life”, p.125, Taylor & Francis

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• Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Attitude, Reality, Tunnels

  Robert Anton Wilson (1977). “Cosmic trigger: final secret of the illuminati”, New Falcon Pubns

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• The wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone." Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way.

  James Finn Garner

  Girl, Stress, Riding

  "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times (Little Red Riding Hood - A Politically Correct Fairy Tale)". Book by James Finn Garner, 1994.

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• There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reform, Dialect, Facts

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• There was a small wooden gazebo built out over the water; Isabelle was sitting in it, staring out across the lake. She looked like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting at the top of her tower for someone to ride up and rescue her. Not that traditional princess behavior was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.

  Cassandra Clare

  Princess, Lakes, Hair

  Cassandra Clare (2010). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (3 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass”, p.547, Simon and Schuster

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• To Serve and Protect..."- Traditional Motto of Protection Rackets

  Robert Asprin

  Protection, Motto, Racket

  Robert Asprin (1990). “M.Y.T.H. Inc. in action”

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• Traditional religions practices are important.They allow us to share with others the communal experience of adoration and prayer,but we must never forget spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love,and with love,there are no rules some may try to control their emotions and develop strategies for their behavior,others may turn to reading books of advice from "experts" on relationships but this is all folly.The heart decides and what it decides is all that really matters.

  Paulo Coelho

  Spiritual, Prayer, Book

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• Rome is burning, Jesus says. Drop your fiddle, change your life and come to Me. Let go of the good days that never were - a regimented church you never attended, traditional virtues you never practiced, legalistic obedience you never honored, and a sterile orthodoxy you never accepted. The old era is done. The decisive inbreak of God has happened.

  Brennan Manning

  Letting Go, Jesus, Good Day

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• The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable.... It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy. It was thus possible for traditional cultures to conceive that "to work is to pray." (pg. 258, The Idea of a Local Economy)

  Wendell Berry

  Practice, Ideas, Two

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