Daniel Handler Quotes

He who does not move with the times is a dead man

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.

You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

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.

We can't be beholden to the past.

Our industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation.

An ounce of logic can be worth more than a ton of tradition that has become obsolete through the weathering of time.

The new is threatening to those who have mastered the old.

Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.

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.

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.

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.

Building the future holds more attraction than ancestor worship, whichever ancestor we're talking about.

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.

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

You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

As beautiful as simplicity is, it can become a tradition that stands in the way of exploration.

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

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