Colin Macinnes Quotes

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.

I adore tradition. I cannot stand habit. Simply to repeat is nothing, also to destroy is nothing. Tradition is never interrupted, we are always evolving but never interrupted.

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.

Culture is just a shambling zombie that repeats what it did in life; bits of it drop off, and it doesn't appear to notice.

People tend to believe that to be modern you have to disengage from your heritage, but it's not true.

In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

I'm an optimist - that's why I try to invent different systems; otherwise, I may as well stop right now. Sometimes I get the feeling the French cinema holds on tightly to what exists already.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.

Change does not change tradition, it strengthens it. Change is a challenge and anopportunity, not a threat.

Tradition simply means that we need to end what began well and continue what is worth continuing

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.

Habit creates the appearance of justice; progress has no greater enemy than habit.

But a people unable to reform will not be able to preserve its old culture either.

The Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.

Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future.

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

Change is no threat to culture.

So we have to be careful because if you don't protect your culture you won't have it for very long.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

The world changed. Hollywood changed. I think we've lost something, and we don't know how to get it back.

For members of a traditional society where many traditions have been discredited, an interest in modernity can result in a restless sophistication. Mehmet Ertegun seems not to have been a restless man.

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.

If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.

The modern minds in each generation are the critics who preserve us from a petrifying world, who will not leave us to walk undisturbed in the ways of our fathers.

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.