Breaking Tradition Quotes

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance. ~ Steven Strogatz

The Shawnees, Miamis and Delawares follow the custom of placing their children into the male gens by giving them a gentile name belonging to the father's gens, so that they may be entitled to inherit. "Innate casuistry of man, to change the objects by changing their names, and to find loopholes for breaking tradition inside of tradition where a direct interest was a sufficient motive." (Marx.) ~ Friedrich Engels

Without even trying to be a teacher,
Fredrika is teaching us,
Showing us how to see things in new ways
Instead of always thinking
The same old thoughts
That have been passed along by strangers
Day after day, year after year
Without any spirit of amazement
Or wonder, ~ Margarita Engle

Yeah. She's smiling. But don't let that fool you. Look into her eyes. She's breaking inside. ~ Unknown

It's always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I've always preferred to go straight through. ~ Twyla Tharp

There was a tradition of soap-box public speaking in Sator Square. "Speaking" was stretching a point to cover the ranters, haranguers and occasional self-absorbed mumblers that spaced themselves at intervals amongst the crowds. And, traditionally, people said whatever was on their minds and at the top of their voices. The Patrician, it was said, looked kindly on the custom. He did. And very closely, too. He probably had someone make notes. ~ Terry Pratchett

Soul can't exist unless you have active, meaningful dialogue with stakeholders: employees, customers, the community, suppliers, and investors. When you launch a business, your job as the entrepreneur is to say, 'Here's a value proposition that I believe in. Here's where I'm coming from. This is my point of view.' At first, it's a monologue. Gradually it becomes a dialogue and then a real conversation. Like breaking in a baseball glove. You can't will a baseball glove to be broken in; you have to use it. Well, you have to use a new business, too. You have to break it in. If you move on to the next thing too quickly, it will never develop its soul. Look what happens when a new restaurant opens. Everyone rushes in to see it, and it's invariably awkward because it hasn't yet developed soul. That takes time to emerge, and you have to work at it constantly. ~ Anonymous

That's the problem with following all the rules - somebody else is eventually going to get ahead by breaking them, and then where will you be? ~ Delilah S. Dawson

I think in the end, you would have stayed with me, out of obligation ... or maybe comfort. Maybe I was safe to you, and you needed to feel that. I know how scared you get of the unknown. To you ... I must be kind of a security blanket. Do you see now, how that doesn't work for me? I don't want to be there, simply because the idea of me being gone is too ... scary. I want to be someone's everything. I want fire and passion, and love that's returned, equally. I want to be someone's heart ... Even if it means breaking my own. ~ S.C. Stephens

The four of us piled inside. Hi pressed five. The doors slid shut.
"Hope nobody else needs a lift," Shelton whispered.
"We can make something up," Hi hissed. "Say we lost our pony."
I snorted. "And came to report it at one a.m.?"
"Better than breaking in to steal evidence," Hi countered. "Maybe we loved that pony. ~ Kathy Reichs

Politicians in our times feed their clichés to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. Television purports to challenge political language by conveying images, but the succession from one frame to another can hinder a sense of resolution. Everything happens fast, but nothing actually happens. Each story on televised news is "breaking" until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.

The effort to define the shape and significance of events requires words and concepts that elude us when we are entranced by visual stimuli. Watching televised news is sometimes little more than looking at someone who is also looking at a picture. We take this collective trance to be normal. We have slowly fallen into it.

More than half a century ago, the classic novels of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies, and the associated difficulties of thought. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953, firemen find and burn books while most citizens watch interactive television. In George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949, books are banned and television is two-way, allowing the government to observe citizens at all times. In 1984, the language of visual media is highly constrained, to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the present, remember the past, and consider the future. One of the regime's projects is to lim ~ Timothy Snyder

Bree: Meet me at Dukes, there's a heap of talent here ;)
Me: Just finishing up, talent... you mean eye candy with an attachable penis?
Bree: Well I'd hope it's not detachable... don't need that breaking off anywhere!! ~ Sarah Clay

We all know the definition of shattered: to break into pieces; to weaken, destroy; to damage, as by breaking or crushing.
But my story isn't about being shattered.
It's about surviving the pieces. ~ Nashoda Rose

The storytelling tradition that you bring from the South, I don't know where it arose, but it's still there. You can't go to the feed store, or the country courthouse without running into storytellers. ~ Charles Kuralt

This wasn't just an attack against the Boston Marathon ... It was an attack against the American public and our democratic use of the streets. We have used our public roadways for annual parades, protest marches, presidential inaugurations, marathons, and all manner of other events. The roads belong to us, and their use represents an important part of our free and democratic tradition. ~ Amby Burfoot

Part of the training of a Special Circumstances agent was learning a) that the rules were supposed to be broken sometimes, b) just how to go about breaking the rules, and c) how to get away with it, whether the rule-breaking had led to a successful outcome or not. ~ Iain M. Banks

Inside the restaurant young Strattonites carried on their time-honored tradition of acting like packs of untamed wolves. ~ Jordan Belfort

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. ~ George Orwell

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning. ~ Joan D. Vinge

For this my mother wrapped me warm,
And called me home against the storm,
And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,
And gave me roughage in my diet,
And tucked me in my bed at eight,
And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,
And watched me as I sat and stood:
That I might grow to womanhood
To hear a whistle and drop my wits
And break my heart to clattering bits. ~ Dorothy Parker

She wished to find out about this hazardous business of "passing," this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one's chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly. ~ Nella Larsen

I'm pretty good with talking to girls if I have an introduction, but I'm the worst at trying to go pick up a girl. I'm really bad at breaking the ice. It's awkward! ~ Bryan Greenberg

Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! ~ John Greenleaf Whittier

I am a descendent of a whole bunch of Black folk who couldn't be broken. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

The Doctor: No one's even questioning them. It's just become the way it is. And tradition, for the sake of tradition, is one of my least favourite things in the whole world. Worse than olives.

Graham: "What's wrong with olives?"

The Doctor: "We don't have time to go into what's wrong with them right now, Graham, we'd be here for weeks. ~ Juno Dawson

The American patriots of today continue the tradition of the long line of patriots before them, by helping to promote liberty and freedom around the world. ~ John Linder

I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual ~ Virginia Woolf

The people through which the Tradition of the Sun spoke were people just like anyone else, and who, one morning or one evening, looked at the world and felt the presence of something greater. They had unwittingly plunged into an unknown sea, and, for the most part, they did not do so again.
Everyone, at least once in each incarnation, possessed the secret of the Universe. ~ Paulo Coelho

Americans, more than any other culture on earth, are cookbook cooks; we learn to make our meals not from any oral tradition, but from a text. The just-wed cook brings to the new household no carefully copied collection of the family's cherished recipes, but a spanking new edition of 'Fannie Farmer' or 'The Joy of Cooking'. ~ John Thorne

I WAS ON A SMALL ISLAND ONCE, IN THE MIDDLE OF a great big lake, mountains all over the place, and as I watched the floating dock the wind kicked up, the waves rose from nowhere, and I imagined myself lying there and the dock suddenly breaking loose, carried away by the storm. I wondered if I could lie still and enjoy the sensation of rocking, after all I wouldn't be dead yet, I wouldn't be drowning, just carried off somewhere that wasn't part of my plan. The very thought of it gave me the shivers. Still, how great to be enjoying the ride, however uncertain the outcome. I'd like that. It's what we're all doing anyway, we just don't know it. ~ Abigail Thomas

I married a woman who loves to camp, and I am what you would call "indoorsy" ... My wife always brings up, "Camping's a tradition in my family." Hey, it was a tradition in everyone's family 'til we came up with the house. ~ Jim Gaffigan

I am interested in the unknown, and the only path to the unknown is through breaking barriers, an often painful process. ~ Diana Nyad

The rise of community among cultures and religious traditions makes possible what we can call 'interspirituality': the assimilation of insights, values, and spiritual practices from the various religions and their application to one's own inner life and development. ~ Wayne Teasdale

In my own spiritual journey, I became a swami on the Hindu path of Bhakti. In the Hindu tradition, a swami is a monk who forgoes regular family life for the purpose of making the whole world his family and channels his full energy into spiritual practice, devotion to God and service to humanity. ~ Radhanath Swami

Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language. ~ Alice McDermott

The fact that there are now many entities that may have some loose affiliation with a former core Al Qaeda - or who have decided to fashion themselves as an affiliate or follower in the Al Qaeda jihadist tradition - as well as groups that are just inspired by the concept that they could also be the perpetrators of mass killing, means that there is a spectrum of threats. ~ Graham T. Allison

She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. ~ Ian McEwan

The thing that intrigued me about 'Breaking Bad' from day one was the idea of taking a character and transforming him. ~ Vince Gilligan

His jaw clenched. "Okay, so I guess trying to let you down easy was a bad idea--"

"This is your idea of letting me down easy? Breaking up with me so you can screw other girls? Without feeling guilty? Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack."

The last thing I thought before I picked up my econ textbook and hurled it at him: How can he use such a piece-of-shit cliche in a moment like this? ~ Tammara Webber

I'll tell you something: I'll always be broke. It's a tradition in the family. My grandfather was a bankrupt. My father was a pauper. My uncle was a miser: he went crazy because he couldn't find any money to mise over. ~ James Hadley Chase

I am not really breaking any rules. Charlie said I could never take another step through the door again ... I came in through the window ... Still, the intent was clear, said Edward. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Many of us knuckle-dragging brush-painters think that 'behind the times' is part of our job description. Why deny ourselves the authentic journey of a time-honoured form? ~ Robert Genn

Detachment, properly understood, means freedom, inner freedom. And, although it is not a word Jesus used, detachment expresses very well an important element in his spirituality: the ability to let go. In the Christian tradition this has been spoken of as "purity of heart" or as the process of becoming "poor in spirit. ~ Albert Nolan

Poetry must find ways of breaking distance ... all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds. ~ Giannina Braschi

[Into the Badlands] wasn't going to be two days of a splinter unit at the end of the shoot. The action and the martial arts had to be integral to the show. That's what makes it unique, that's what makes it special and different and ground-breaking. No one has attempted this before on American television. ~ Miles Millar

The entertainment palled. Fatigue like gravitation pulled at limbs and eyelids. As they had come so they departed, first Abbzug, then the two women from San Diego. The ladies first. Not because they were the weaker sex - they were not - but simply because they had more sense. Men on an outing feel obliged to stay up drinking to the vile and bilious end, jabbering, mumbling and maundering through the blear, to end up finally on hands and knees, puking on innocent sand, befouling God's sweet earth. The manly tradition. The ~ Edward Abbey

The American people are beginning to think in new ways about health and illness ... Bernie Siegel is helping to define and open up these new frontiers. In this sense he is in the best medical tradition. ~ Norman Cousins

Still, there is something disappearing from the world, something composed of many instances of tradition and skill, or maybe not disappearing, but translating. Maybe culture, like physical matter, doesn't disappear, but is subject to infinite play, and th e world is a vast workshop for making and remaking everything, including people, and the engine of play is desire… ~ Andrei Codrescu

I arrived back home just before midnight, and Marlboro Man met me at the car. I could hear nothing but cows and crickets when I climbed out of my car and into his arms, which were strong and warm and comforting. I was a wreck--sick to my stomach and even more sick in my heart--and Marlboro Man helped me to the house, as if I were crippled by a terminal illness. I was completely beat, hardly able to finish my shower before I fell into bed with Marlboro Man, who rubbed my back as I tried with all my might to keep from throwing up, breaking down, and completely saturating my red floral pillowcase with tears. ~ Ree Drummond

May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in. ~ Mother Teresa

Powell belongs, in fact to the first generation of American poets who may have grown up without even a vestigial connection to the accentual-syllabic, rhyming English tradition - his inventive lines have this absence at their back. ~ Stephen Burt