Deepak Chopra Quotes

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

Change often makes accepted customs into crimes.

I don't support gay marriage. I'm just not there, as far as believing in my heart that we should change 2,000 years of social policy in favor of a redefinition of the family.

Things change so fast, you can't use 1971 ethics on someone born in 1971.

In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

There aren't any looks or customs I wish would come back. Today almost anything goes. Culture constantly devours the past so there's not much that's missing.

When cultural change succeeds, it succeeds because it's so embedded in what we do that we don't have to think about.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

I'm not super-conservative, but a bit of tradition is nice.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

People have always been resistant to change. If you go back to the 17th, 18th century, playing guitar was frowned upon. When rock n' roll first started, no one took it seriously.

Major religions usually remain major because they sanctify whatever is the social stricture of the day.

Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! Beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!

Competition, or the unimpeded pressure of individual on individual, has been from the beginning a great force in societies ; but of old it was hindered and controlled by custom ; in the future, like the other great physical forces of society, it will be controlled by morality.

The Chinese move very slowly. Our customs are so fixed that it takes much time to change them.

Religion and the traditions based on it were once the chief sources for moral confidence and strength. Their influence has faded in the modern world, but the need for a sound base for moral judgments has not. If we cannot look simply to moral guidance firmly founded on religious precepts it is natural and reasonable to turn to history, the record of human experience, as a necessary supplement if not a substitute.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

I think our societies - to certain extent, of course, and to different degrees, but almost with no exception - have always been struggling to come to terms with archaic traditions.

The point of human evolution is adapting to circumstance. Not letting go of the old, but adapting it, is necessary.

Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion.

It has always been like that with changes. In 1913, we established divorce as a right for women in Uruguay. You know what they were saying back then? That families would dissolve. That it was the end of good manners and society. There has always been a conservative and traditional opinion out there that's afraid of change. When I was young and would go dancing at balls, we'd have to wear suits and ties. Otherwise they wouldn't let us in. I don't think anyone dresses up for dancing parties nowadays.

No civilisation, not even that of ancient Greece, has ever undergone such a continuous and profound process of change as Western Europe has done during the last 900 years. It is impossible to explain this fact in purely economic terms by a materialistic interpretation of history. The principle of change has been a spiritual one and the progress of Western civilisation is intimately related to the dynamic ethos of Western Christianity, which has gradually made Western man conscious of his moral responsibility and his duty to change the world.

Experience supplies painful proof that traditions once called into being are first called useful, then they become necessary. At last they are too often made idols, and all must bow down to them or be punished.

The conventions of society are all in the interests of morality. If you're conventional, you'll be good, in a negative sense, of course.