Tradition Loss Quotes

There is nothing worth having that can be obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating.

We desecrated the traditional values, but new values didn't come along.

I used to be monastic, almost. Now I'm like a Tibetan that has discovered hamburgers and television. I'm catching up on Americana.

In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea.

In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.

The almighty dollar and the lust for world wide fame, slowly killed tradition, and for that someone should hang.

It's a sad commentary on our time - to use a phrase much favored by my late father - that people increasingly celebrate Christmas Day by going to the movies.

Tomorrow country then, tomorrow country now.

Religions die slowly.

I've often wondered if the trade-off for growing up in the relative newness and freshness of the West Coast was befuddlement when it comes to historical preservation. We don't have many old things, and we don't really know what to do with the few that are around when our default response is to compost or field burn.