James Russell Lowell Quotes

What's vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.

Time consecrates; and what is gray with age becomes religion.

Taste for things of the past evolves, doesn't it? What was a masterpiece a hundred years ago is no longer so today.

Custom ... changes the very nature of things; and what was honorable a thousand years ago, may probably be looked upon as infamous now.

I don't think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn't change.

You can't always count on the devices, attitudes, and conceits that stood you in good stead in 1972 or 1973, or 1978-79, to still have the same impact all these years later.

America has swerved from its ethical center.

I think culture is a very challenging thing to reverse.

There was a time for German stars in the 1950s with Curt Jurgens, Hardy Kruger, O. W. Fischer, and Maria Schell. That was a totally different generation. It all ended in 1968 during the big students' movement in my country. It was an anti-authority movement that changed everything. All my country's hierarchies, morals and values were questioned.

For me, one of the jobs of an artist is to try to see changes taking place.

I like to play with contrast. It's about changing people's perceptions of people.

Time will change and with it music will too. Our speed has changed, clothes have changed, food habits have changed, so why should music remain the same?

Honor the tradition but expand the understanding. That's what religions must do right now if they hope to be helpful to humans in the years ahead.

The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

The people are maybe still as aware of the differences but they are more accepting of it that what we saw in the 70s and 80s, but the undercurrent is still there. There are maybe no racial slurs anymore, no firecrackers in mailboxes, the distinction is much more subtle.

I think that once somebody sees something, or feels it in the consciousness of society, it starts to allow change for other people.

On a small planet, where minute follows minute, day follows day, year follows year, where tradition marches on with a deafening, orderly beat -sometimes the order is disturbed by a dreamer, an artist, a scribbler - sometimes the beat is changed one person at a time.

The students [of the 60's] substituted conspicuous compassion for their parents' conspicuous consumption.

Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.

Ask counsel of both timesof the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest.

Change the story and you change perception; change perception and you change the world.

Men in general desire the good and not merely what their fathers had.

The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Find good in what the world says is evil.