Nadine Gordimer Quotes

Ancient Egyptians went to great lengths to avoid change; they couldn't entirely do so, of course, but did preserve a cultural continuity for almost four thousand years.

You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it.

Changes in the traditional way of building are only permitted if they are an improvement. Otherwise stay with what is traditional, for truth, even if it be hundreds of years old has a stronger inner bond with us than the lie that walks by our side.

But I think it's important that things endure.

We are all part of a tradition, at least we depend on the past.

It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

Let them look to the past, but let them also look to the future; let them look to the land of their ancestors, but let them look also to the land of their children.

Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century we abandoned tradition, it's at that point that I intend to renew it because the present is built on the past just as the past was built on the times that went before it.

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past.

I'm the proof - you can't throw away tradition.

I think that our comfort is in our history.

I want to make sure people are connected with the future as well as the past.

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.

We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.

Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?

The world to come must be composed of what is past. No other material is at hand.

Because men really respect only that which was founded of old and has developed slowly, he who wants to live on after his death must take care not only of his posterity but even more of his past.

If you plan on continuing a tradition, it might be a good idea to find out just what tradition it is that you intend to continue.

If we do not honor our past, we lose our future. If we destroy our roots, we cannot grow.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Keep all special thoughts and memories for lifetimes to come. Share these keepsakes with others to inspire hope and build from the past, which can bridge to the future.

Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.