Russell Smith Quotes

We have 5000-year-old history which is now almost a part of our DNA. How do you break that? America, for example, doesn't have that history behind it. It romanticizes rebellion. We look down upon rebellion. It's an insult. To think out-of-the-box is looked down upon here.

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.

Tribalism reflects strong ethnic or cultural identities that separate members of one group from another, making them loyal to people like them and suspicious of outsiders, which undermines efforts to forge common cause across groups.

People tend to believe that to be modern you have to disengage from your heritage, but it's not true.

Tradition is the illusion of permanance.

Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.

We are the High Chiefs of these islands. We are the leaders of the people. On us is the duty of pointing out to them the right course. Bear this in mind. We have to lead on two points- hold back those who advocate radical changes (for which we are not sufficiently educated) and enliven the laggards before their ignorance destroys us.

Tribalism is the most powerful force in the world.

People want to be with their own and want to be separated from others.

Thinking of ourselves as members of 'this group' or 'that group,' I think that's a recipe for division.

The conservative is the one who understands his own society from within and loves and defends it.

In the larger world, tribalism is an enormous problem, as it ever has been: both strength and idiocy borne from belonging.

I believe history and tradition is something solid and something we can rest on. I am not crazy about putting new spices in chocolate.

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

I do believe, separate and apart from any particular election or movement, that we are going to have to guard against a rise in a crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around an us and a them.

Further strengthenings of the self-centered instinct for survival recruit even greater numbers of people into some sort of ring of fellowship (church or gender, red state or blue) by populating the terra incognita outside the ring with enough barbarians to verify the existence of a civilization within--to define the preferred stock by what, as all good people agree, it decidedly is not.

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask 'Why do we stay up there if it's so dangerous?' Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!

I cannot write too much upon how necessary it is to be completely conservative that is particularly traditional in order to be free.

Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.

No nation can survive without passing its heritage, language and, yes, faith to the next generation. A country must be built on something substantial and if the cultural elitists think it can be built on 'diversity,' that is a foundation of shifting sand.

Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington.

I don't see tribalism ever really disappearing entirely. I just think that people are almost hardwired to identify as groups. And that sort of group identity always runs the risk of being chauvinistic.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

I know that everything essential and great originated from the fact that the human being had a homeland and was rooted in tradition.