A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

Henry David Thoreau

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Conformity Deep How Ruts Tradition

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Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

Henry David Thoreau

We may be thankful that frightened civil authorities ... have not managed to eradicate from the country the tradition of the possession and use of firearms, that profound and almost instinctive tradition of Americans. Luckily for us, our tradition of bearing arms has not gone from the country, the tradition is so deep and so dear to us that it is one of the most treasured parts of the Bill of Rights - the right of all Americans to bear arms, with the implication that they will know how to use them.

John Steinbeck

We walk ourselves into ruts so deep we cannot see over them.

Tom Brown, Jr.

Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I am neither for conformity nor non-conformity. I am for individuality. If one's individuality is in effect non-conformity, then so be it. But basically, one's individuality consists of conformity--to one's self.

Paul Krassner

Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.

John Milton

What is literary tradition? What is a classic? What is a canonical view of tradition? How are canons of accepted classics formed,and how are they unformed? I think that all these quite traditional questions can take one simplistic but still dialectical question as their summing up: do we choose tradition or does it choose us, and why is it necessary that a choosing take place, or a being chosen? What happens if one tries to write, or to teach, or to think, or even to read without the sense of a tradition? Why, nothing at all happens, just nothing.

Harold Bloom

When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.

James Hillman

We all admire the courageous person and quite often consider the individual who lacks courage, a coward. However, that is not how Earl Nightingale saw it. He said the opposite of courage was not cowardness, it was conformity. The next time you are encouraged to fall into line, to be a sport and everything in you says no - be courageous and go your own way. There is no compensation in conformity.

Bob Proctor

Every religious tradition on which we draw has a reverence for life. We are a part of an intricate web of life. Every tradition on which we draw teaches that the ultimate expression of our spirituality is our action. Deep spirituality leads to action in the world. A deep reverence for life, love of nature's complex beauty and sense of intimate connection with the cosmos leads inevitably to a commitment to work for environmental and social justice.

Peter Morales

Only those of our poets who kept solidly to the Shakespearean tradition achieved any measure of success. But Keats was the last great exponent of that tradition, and we all know how thin, how lacking in charm, the copies of Keats have become.

Amy Lowell

It's time to realise that tradition is fantastic but if because of tradition and only tradition you lose everyone it's less fantastic so you have to keep some tradition to this sport of course but you also have to live in your century.

Patrick Mouratoglou

One of the saddest things about conformity is the ghastly sort of non-conformity it breeds; the noisy protesting, the aggressive rebelliousness, the rigid counter-fetishism.

Louis Kronenberger

The truth of practical intellect is understood not as conformity to an extramental being but as conformity to a right desire; the end is no longer to know what is, but to bring into existence that which is not yet.

Jacques Maritain

The three of us [me, Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman] all learned how to play our instruments together. We had a common interest in bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple. Bands who had different time signatures etc and for whatever reason, we morphed into Corrosion of Conformity. It's been about thirty years now.

Reed Mullin

There is an ancient tradition of how to tie the topknot that gets passed down from parent to child. In my case, my mom taught me it. So this is a tradition, and not all Sikhs know it actually.

Jagmeet Singh

A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

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