John Stuart Mill Quotes

No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

No important institution is ever merely what the law makes it. It accumulates about itself traditions, conventions, ways of behavior, which ... are not less formidable in their influence.

It is my opinion that whatever is the custom of a nation, and is practiced by the first characters of that nation towards their chief, cannot degrade strangers who perform the same.

Where a bad custom has been in existence for any length of time, most people grow to regard it as part of the order of nature.

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

It's possible that you have been told a time or 10 that you don't appreciate how tough your elders had it. It's true that, if you had been coming of age back in, say, 1960, you would probably be feeling more restricted, if only because you were doomed to spend your days in a skirt, nylon stockings and girdle.

We have religious superstitions of the Middle Ages that shape our 21st century social policies.

It's very much simpler to get rid of any written rule you choose than it is an item of customary morality... while laws are preserved on tablets of wood or stone, customary morality is engraved deep in our living souls

As manners make laws, so manners likewise repeal them.

… a country's laws are written upon paper, and that its customs are engraved upon brass. One may play with the one, but not with the other. It is less risky for a stranger to dance upon our Constitution in the public square than to affront one of our solidified customs. The one is merely eminently respectable, the other is sacred.

The common man thinks that the marriage is like appointing one to do his work. The husband thinks so! The husband’s family thinks so. Every one thinks that a girl is coming to the family to do work. Even the girl’s family trains the girl to do the household work

You have to accept that traditions exist, that people don't change their minds very quickly, that people are scared.

We didn't do cotillions or anything. My family made fun of the pageants.

Mum wasn't scared of dad but I'm sure she got fed up with him taking her for granted... When I look back it was an empty relationship but I doubt there was ever a question of them splitting up. It wasn't the done thing.

People are saying I am against the chador. I am not. On the contrary. I am for traditional family values.

I was raised in a very Middle Eastern household, and modesty was very important, and dressing to not be desirable or provocative was very important.

There's so many strict ideas and rules, whether it's from religion or it's just generations and generations.

I was brought up in a fairly emotionally repressed kind of society in Northeast England where one didn't express emotions and was expected to keep a stiff upper lip.

An African man should not do anything called housework or cooking.

In Mexico, I think I'm considered conservative. Not politically - in terms of form and experimentation.

Tradition is nothing but ancestral peer pressure.

Like, in Asian culture, you have to be down with the family. You have to be down with all the crazy traditional or non-traditional things we do.

Even though I did things which were not in accordance with the society's norms, deep down, I am an orthodox woman.

Latin American culture is conservative, and the rural areas are tremendously conservative. I don't believe that's just a Chilean thing.