Chinua Achebe Quotes

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.

I say it is indispensable to look ahead of and behind oneself in the present. If there is such a thing as tradition, and I believe there is, it can only exist in the sense of the most profound movements of culture.

Malcolm was a firm believer in the value and importance of our heritage. He believed that we have valuable and distinct cultural traditions which need to be institutionalized so that they can be passed on to our heirs.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

I like places that have history in the sense of - you feel responsible to it.

Retaining culture takes effort and persistence and discipline. It's a commitment, not a flag. You can't just pull it out and wave it about when it's convenient.

A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.

There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there - a source of vital strength.

My work is as an ethnographic rescuer: a conduit between past and future generations. The urgency of this effort cannot be overstated.

Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.

In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.

A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies - all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.

From the outside you may see all the social indicators of decline, but from the inside I see an extremely tenacious people interested in holding on to their traditions.

A people without a history is like the wind over buffalo grass.

It is of the essence of traditions that they cover or conceal their humble foundations by erecting impressive edifices on them.

Civilisations which get cut off from their traditions and values do not survive for long.

I do think evolution is an important aspect of keeping a tradition alive. If it freezes and remains very static in its form, it dies, and so a natural evolution has to occur.

I believe history and tradition is something solid and something we can rest on. I am not crazy about putting new spices in chocolate.

Change does not change tradition, it strengthens it. Change is a challenge and anopportunity, not a threat.

The American dream has always depended on the dialogue between the present and the past. In our architecture, as in all our other arts-indeed, as in our political and social culture as a whole-ours has been a struggle to formulate and sustain a usable past.

Individually, museums are fine institutions, dedicated to the high values of preservation, education and truth; collectively, their growth in numbers points to the imaginative death of this country.