Albert Einstein Quotes

Society will be obeyed; if you refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only just so far as it has custom on its side.

… 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.

Cultures grow on the vine of tradition.

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

Women serve as guardians of culture, upholders of society.

Society's the mother of convention.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful.

I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven, and that is public opinion-the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That's the steam that is to work the engines.

With customes wee live well, but Lawes undoe us.

We have a unique culture.

Americans are locked into our traditions.

Culture is a reflection of values.

Opinion has ever been stronger than law.

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.

Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts; but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together.

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 moral foundation of the society, the way we interact with each other is more fundamental than the Supreme Court.

Customs may not be as wise as laws, but they are always more popular.

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.

Culture is coded wisdom

Each country is strong on some tradition.

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.

A young man is embarrassed to question an older one.