A Quote by Louis Kronenberger

From the failure of the humanist tradition to participate fully or to act decisively, civilizations may perhaps crumble or perish at the hands of barbarians. But unless the humanist tradition itself in some form survives, there can really be no civilization at all.

Louis Kronenberger

Quote Topics

Act Barbarians Civilization Civilizations Crumble Failure Form Fully Hands Humanist Itself May Participate Perhaps Perish Really Some Tradition Unless

Quote Author

Louis Kronenberger
American - Novelist
December 9, 1904 - April 30, 1980

I would want to conceive of philosophy as grounded in the very long humanist tradition that is the best of the West, which is open to the East and North and South.

Cornel West

The only difference between a Religious Humanist and a Secular Humanist is what they do on Sunday.

Fred Edwords

He was a humanist then, he's a humanist now, and to my mind John Carlos is an authentic American hero.

Tavis Smiley

I believe indeed that to rescue the humanist tradition of the last decades is of the utmost importance, and that Victor Serge is one of the outstanding personalities representing the socialist aspect of humanism.

Erich Fromm

Women's fight for equal rights is essentially a humanist and peaceful struggle for true democracy, and a higher form of civilization.

Leyla Zana

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 reason which I find particularly fascinating about Israel is this. There is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. There is a Jewish culture, a Jewish religion, but there is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. The Jews were a component basically of two civilizations. In the Western world, we talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition and you talk about the Judeo-Islamic tradition because there were large and important Jewish communities living in the lands of Islam.

Bernard Lewis

These days I'm often called a Deviant Calvinist, but I don't really think my views do deviate from the Reformed tradition, though in some respects they may represent views that are not as popular now as they once were, or that may represent a minority report in the tradition.

Oliver D. Crisp

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

The urge to break with a tradition is only appropriate when you're dealing with an outdated, troublesome tradition: I never really thought about that because I take the old-fashioned approach of equating tradition with value (which may be a failing). But whatever the case, positive tradition can also provoke opposition if it's too powerful, too overwhelming, too demanding. That would basically be about the human side of wanting to hold your own.

Gerhard Richter

Because Roman civilization perished through barbarian invasions, we are perhaps too much inclined to think that that is the only way a civilization can die. If the lights that guide us ever go out, they will fade little by little, as if of their own accord.... We therefore should not console ourselves by thinking that the barbarians are still a long way off. Some peoples may let the torch be snatched from their hands, but others stamp it out themselves.

Alexis de Tocqueville

We have to claim anarchy and realize that systems have a life of their own that is anti-humanist. There is definitely an anti-humanist tendency in all systems.

Terence McKenna

Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.

Will Durant

Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself.

Kenzo Tange

When tradition is thought to state the way things really are, it becomes the director and judge of our lives; we are, in effect, imprisoned by it. On the other hand, tradition can be understood as a pointer to that which is beyond tradition: the sacred. Then it functions not as a prison but as a lens.