Custom Quotes - page 2

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end. (G. K. Chesterton)
Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom. View quote
Edward Sapir
It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good . Guarantee a man's goodness and his liberty will take care of itself. To guarantee his freedom on condition that you approve of his moral character is formally to abolish all freedom whatsoever, as every man's liberty is at the mercy of a moral indictment which any fool can trump up against everyone who violates custom, whether as a prophet or as a rascal. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
Joy, thou spark from Heav'n immortal, Daughter of Elysium! Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing Goddess, to thy shrine we come. Thy sweet magic brings together What stern Custom spreads afar; All men become brothers Where thy happy wing-beats are. View quote
Friedrich Schiller
It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness. View quote
Herodotus
For neo-conservatism is a quintessentially Jewish project: a re-sanctification in everyday life of the core values of western civilisation, and the achievement of human potential through virtuous practice. The neo-cons' crucial insight is that public signals through law, custom and tradition are the key to getting people to behave well. And that is a Jewish insight. View quote
Melanie Phillips
Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard in all England. View quote
Bret Harte
The Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistress. View quote
Saki
.., by universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning or has planned your destruction. View quote
James Clavell
Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none. View quote
Henry Fielding
To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error. (John Calvin)
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest. View quote
Michel de Montaigne
I'd see the bus pass every day... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world. View quote
Rosa Parks
By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. View quote
John W. Campbell
In love affairs, there is no mediator like a merry, simple-hearted child - ever ready to cement divided hearts, to span the unfriendly gulf of custom, to melt the ice of cold reserve, and overthrow the separating walls of dread formality and pride. View quote
Anne Brontë
A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged. View quote
Derren Brown
These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity. View quote
Herbert Read
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. View quote
Albert Schweitzer
Writing with a simplified alphabet checked the power of custom of an oral tradition but implied a decline in the power of expression and the creation of grooves which determined the channels of thought of readers and later writers. View quote
Harold Innis
It was still the custom of the countryside to build with local materials produced as close to the selected site as possible, for transport was difficult, even the best of country roads being more fitted for horseback traffic rather than heavy loads. (Flora Thompson)
He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess...the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leads to standstill or to anarchy. View quote
Emanuel Lasker
While in the course of ages the nucleus of social custom inscribed in law has been subjected to but slight and gradual modifications, the other portion has been largely developed in directions indicated by the interests of the dominant classes, and to the injury of the classes they oppress. View quote
Peter Kropotkin
It was the custom when men received nominations to come to me for contributions, and I made them and considered them good paying investments for the company. In a Republican district I was a strong Republican; in a Democratic district I was Democratic, and in doubtful districts I was doubtful. In politics I was an Erie Railroad man all the time. View quote
Jay Gould
Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. View quote
Mark Twain