John Oates Quotes

There is no new world that you make without the old world.

We need to open up the future. We also need to keep everything valuable from the past.

Changes in the traditional way of building are only permitted if they are an improvement. Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for truth, even if it be hundreds of years old has a stronger inner bond with us than the lie that walks by our side.

The world changes, but I want that change to be necessary or respectful of what has happened before. Everything changes, and that's quite right.

Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

It's important to evolve without ever straying too far from your roots and what established you.

You can embrace nostalgia and history and tradition at the same time - it has to progress or it can't survive.

We should not fear what is new, but we should not throw out that which is in the past but is still valuable.

It's good to be progressive, but don't shun the good things about tradition.

Tradition simply means that we need to end what began well and continue what is worth continuing

This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.

Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future.

Tradition means taking account of a wonderful history but remembering that everybody today looks to the future.

You have to modernise; you have to change - you can't just be traditional for the fun of being traditional.

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.

… maintain the integrity and flexibility of our teachings

Reform that you may preserve.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone, you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.

A reactionary is fixed on the past and wanting to return to it; a conservative wishes to adapt what is best in the past to the changing circumstances of the present.

Everything evolves, not just music.

Nothing I'm doing is without its predecessors.

There are always people who are into the old way of doing things. I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily, but things change - nothing stays the same. If you can stay true to yourself, you're always going to be legendary.

I think continuity is a good thing. But change is sometimes good, too.

The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.To "see the light" too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.