Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes

I think it's easy to hold on to this romantic hope that communities such as Niaqornat won't change, because we're in this world where progress is unstoppable, and they're a link to some idealised past.

When you talk about change, you know what makes it really tough for people is on the one hand you've got tradition, and on the other hand you've got change; in many people's mind, change equals modernization. Tradition, however. I'm a big tradition guy.

The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Now Momma's done away with the old black kettle she used to cook in when I was just littleAnd the door ain't sprung on her electric rangeThat little old farm and home we had it ain't there no more and that's too badFolks are doing away with the simple things.

Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the act.

We need to open up the future. We also need to keep everything valuable from the past.

What we need in America is a renaissance. We need to go forward by going backward.

I am a traditionalist, and I'm an innovator. Most of what I do is to weigh change and legislate to the best of my ability on what should change and what should not. Do I have a respect for tradition? Of course I do. Do I have a blind belief in it? No.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

We are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future.

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.

I like to be buttoned onto tradition. The thing is to improve it, twist it and mold it; to make something new of it; not to deny it. The riches of history can be plucked at any point.

I am not nostalgic about things. When you have a kind of improvement, I am not nostalgic about the past.

Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant.

We live in a changing world … shall we maintain all our theaters in the same traditional box.

History shows us that the youth are usually a step ahead of their elders when change is required.

To endeavor to rehabilitate the sabbath of our forefathers is as foolish as to try to make people go back into log houses and cook in a fire-place. Some persons can never realize that the world grows; that what was a help to one age becomes a hindrance to another; that time corrects the mistakes of men and that respect and reverence for our ancestors does not necessarily require us to adopt their clothes or their habits.

Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother’s cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.

What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

I think if you ignore the generation after yours, you will be obsolete very quickly.

You have to go with the times. You're going to get left behind if you don't.

You can't allow tradition to get in the way of innovation. There's a need to respect the past, but it's a mistake to revere your past.

Any time there is a new idea, it can take some time for policy to catch up to it.

We should not fear what is new, but we should not throw out that which is in the past but is still valuable.