Traditional Thinking Quotes

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

Conventional wisdom

The most damaging phrase in the language is: 'It's always been done that way.'

It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.

There has always been in history some people who think in the Stone Age.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

Some persons believe everything that their kindred, their parents, and their tutors believe. The veneration and the love which they have for their ancestors incline them to swallow down all their opinions at once, without examining what truth or falsehood there is in them. Men take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

There is no rigorous and effective deconstruction without the faithful memory of philosophies and literatures, without the respectful and competent reading of texts of the past, as well as singular works of our own time. Deconstruction is also a certain thinking about tradition and context. Mark Taylor evokes this with great clarity in the course of a remarkable introduction. He reconstitutes a set of premises without which no deconstruction could have seen the light of day.

I'm waiting for the candidate who says, 'I'm keeping things exactly the way they are. I like it this way.'

I think the lack of automatically feeling, 'Yes, the future is going to be like the present' - that is very much a Jewish thing.

I don't hear record companies coming up with any good ideas or suggestions. Historically, if it ain't their idea, it ain't no good, so you got that to contend with.

If I simply do what I've always done, it's never failed me.

There are certain things which the average Irish mind will never allow as debatable.

Why should we hesitate to toss the old views overboard.

Nostalgia combines regularly with manifest respectability to give credence to old error as opposed to new truth.

Conventional wisdom can get us into so much trouble, especially as artists.

Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.

Far too many of our elected officials are chained to an ideology that is rooted in the past. They are keepers of normalcy who embrace things as they've always been.

A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.

Our feeling is that the status quo often gets a boost and this is the new status quo.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

Unfortunately, our existing traditional thinking habits insist that you must attack something and show it to be bad before you can suggest a change. It is more difficult to acknowledge that something is excellent and then to ask for change because although it is excellent, it is not enough.

Writing in form is a way of developing your thinking - your thinking along with the tradition. In a way, it's not you alone, it's you in partnership.