Traditional Quotes - page 8
Equal employment opportunities, yes, but we shouldn't get our women into jobs where they cannot, at the same time, be mothers...our most valuable asset is in the ability of our people, yet we are frittering away this asset through the unintended consequences of changes in our education policy and equal opportunities for women. This has affected their traditional role ... as mothers, the creators and protectors of the next generation.
Lee Kuan Yew
There is a train track in the history of art that goes way back to Mesopotamia. It skips the whole Orient, The Mayas, And American Indians. Duchamp is on it. Cézanne is on it. Picasso and the Cubists are on it; Giacometti, Piet Mondrian, and so many... I have some feeling about all these people – millions of them – on this enormous track, a way into history. They had a peculiar way of measuring. They seemed to measure with a length similar to their own height... The idea that the thing that the artist is making can come to know for itself, how high it is, how wide and how deep it is, is a historical one, - a traditional one I think. It comes from man's own image.
Willem de Kooning
They were murderers and they still are, but policemen are like dogs on a leash.... The police function under political direction. They go after whoever they are sent after, and that's where the problem comes in.... Black people were moving out of their traditional position in America. Nobody knew what to do about it. The white politicians were confused, the blacks were confused.... the police were told to go out, stop those civil-rights marches ... and they went out and did that. When you talk to police now who participated in that, you find out that they were in the same position we were in - just trying to find the right formula.
Eldridge Cleaver
No doubt the Mexican Indian is well suited to his environment, and his traditional habits are well suited to him. This does not mean, however, that either has any important contribution to make to the United States which would be realized by a northward mass migration of agricultural and industrial serfs. On the contrary, the Mexican immigration to the United States, which is made up overwhelmingly of the poorer Indian element, has brought nothing but disadvantages.
Madison Grant
Decidedly, we are at cross-purposes. What's all this you tell [from England] about the modern movement, commercialism, etc, etc? It bears no relation to our concept of art, at any rate here... That is where the error lies. Trade serves those up to us as readily as anything else; so it is no use. Wouldn't it be better to steep ourselves in genuine nature again? I do not consider in the least that we are making a mistake, that we should turn to the steam-engine and follow the general public [ William Morris, the more traditional artist became very popular those days]... No, a thousand times no! We are here to point the way.... the remedy is to be found in nature, more than ever. Let us follow what we consider to be the proper aim, we shall see who is right. After all, money is a fragile thing; let us earn some of it, since we must, but let us keep to our role.
Camille Pissarro
British Liberalism is not going to repeat the errors of Continental Liberalism. The fate of Continental Liberalism should warn them of that danger. It has been swept on one side before it had well begun its work, because it refused to adapt itself to new conditions. The Liberalism of the Continent concerned itself exclusively with mending and perfecting the machinery which was to grind corn for the people. It forgot that the people had to live whilst the process was going on, and people saw their lives pass away without anything being accomplished. But British Liberalism has been better advised. It has not abandoned the traditional ambition of the Liberal party to establish freedom and equality; but side by side with this effort it promotes measures for ameliorating the conditions of life for the multitude.
David Lloyd George
African independence was greeted with pomp, ceremony, and a resurgence of traditional African music and dance. "A new day has dawned,” "we are on the threshold of a new era,” "we have now entered into the political kingdom”-those were the phrases of the day, and they were repeated until they became clichés.
Walter Rodney
The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.
José Ortega y Gasset
I felt dissatisfied with traditional perspective. Merely a mechanical process, this perspective never conveys things in full. It starts from one viewpoint and never gets away from it. But the viewpoint is quite unimportant. It is though someone were to draw profiles all his life, leading people to think that a man has only one eye.. .When one got to thinking like that, everything changed, you cannot imagine how much!
Georges Braque
Creativity is not limited to people practising one of the traditional forms of art, and even in the case of artists, creativity is not confined to the exercise of their art. Each one of us has a creative potential, which is hidden by competitiveness and success-aggression. To recognize, explore and develop this potential is the task of the School. Creation – whether it be a painting, sculpture, symphony or novel – involves not merely talent, intuition, powers of imagination and application, but also the ability to shape material that could be expanded to other socially relevant spheres.
Joseph Beuys
It is most important that we should rid art of all that it has contained of ‘recognizable material' to date, all familiar subject matter, all traditional ideas, all popular symbols must be banished forthwith. More important still, we must hold enormous faith in ourselves; it is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means ‘absolutely nothing' from the logical point of view.... should speak so strongly in us, evoke such agony or joy, that we feel compelled to paint.
Giorgio de Chirico
To learn by example is to submit to authority. ...By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition. ...Common Law ...is the most important system of strictly traditional activities.
Michael Polanyi
Their permanent presence [of the old traditional paintings out of the past] compels us to produce something different, which is neither better nor worse, but which has to be different because we painted the Isenheim Alter [of Grünewald, 14th century] yesterday.. ..the better we know tradition – i.e., ourselves and the more responsibly we deal with it, the better things we will make similar, and the better things we will make different.
Gerhard Richter
