J. D. Salinger Quotes

When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.

All records are not made to be broken.

But I think it's important that things endure.

Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.

I've given my life to the principle and the ideal of memory, and remembrance.

I really don’t make history; I preserve it.

Not everything needs changing. Some things need protecting. And that can be just as important, challenging and rewarding as changing the world.

Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.

It was so strange. I knew that Josephine Baker had performed on the same stage but that night I felt it. Many of the same people who worked with Josephine Baker are still here. They know what they're doing. And that was a very comfortable feeling.

I have a strong impulse to protect history and time and the lineage of events.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

The world changes, but I want that change to be necessary or respectful of what has happened before. Everything changes, and that's quite right.

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.

I still live in the same place I've lived all my life.

We must not be willing to disinter the origins of those [institutions] we wish to preserve.

If we want everything to remain as it is, it will be necessary for everything to change.

The desire to restore everything indiscriminately to its ancient condition is neither wise nor praiseworthy.

History takes time... History makes memory.

Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.

Reform that you may preserve.

We want traditional change—not transformational change.

If something is good, it's always good. You don't have to change it.

I'm old-school, and that's just how I am. It's in my DNA.

I think that our comfort is in our history.

There is a palpable sense of history in the homes that I choose to occupy. I think that's one of the reasons I gravitate towards old homes: I really like that sense of history and that sense that I am one step in a very long process that trails out in both directions around me - before me and ahead of me.