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Tradition is the illusion of permanence.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
Related topics: Cute Whimsey Cynical Movie Change
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
- Woody Allen
The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have,
instead of what you don't have.
- Woody Allen
Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
- Woody Allen
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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All people know the same truth.
Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
Life ... full of loneliness, and misery,
and suffering, and unhappiness,
and it's all over much too quickly.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall
Life's like Vegas. You're up, you're down,
but in the end the house always wins.
Doesn't mean you didn't have fun.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
A relationship, I think, is like a shark.
You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies.
And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall (1977)
I have a very pessimistic view of life.
You should know this about me if we're gonna go out.
You know, I - I feel that life is -
is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.
Those are the two categories, you know.
The - the horrible would be like, um,
I don't know, terminal cases, you know,
and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life.
It's amazing to me. You know, and the miserable is everyone else.
That's - that's - so - so - when you go through life -
you should be thankful that you're miserable
because you're very lucky to be miserable.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall
The inherent nature of God
is not changed by our individual beliefs,
our religious institutions,
or our communal traditions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Nothing is ever absolutely "wrong."
"Wrong" is in the cultural tradition of the beholder.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Honor tradition AND question tradition.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Re-examine all that you have been told...
dismiss that which insults your soul.
- Walt Whitman
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie,
deliberate, contrived and dishonest,
but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
- John F. Kennedy
What old people say you cannot do,
you try and find that you can.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- Henry David Thoreau
The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.
- Terry Goodkind
What people believe prevails over the truth.
- Sophocles
Who has fully realized that history
is not contained in thick books
but lives in our very blood?
- Carl Jung
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
- Joseph Addison
The most dangerous phrase in the language is,
"We've always done it this way."
- Grace Hopper
Most people don't CHOOSE their value system -
they simply inherit the beliefs of their parents and community.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Let reason trump tradition and the opinions of others,
but let your own sense of what is Right trump even reason.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is more dangerous to tradition
than the creative imagination of youth.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Hardly a man in the world has an opinion
upon morals, political, or religion
which he got otherwise than
through his associations and sympathies.
- Mark Twain
This overcoming of all the usual barriers
between the individual and the Absolute
is the great mystic achievement.
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute
and we become aware of our oneness.
This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition,
hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
- William James
No written law has ever been more binding
than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
- Carrie Chapman Catt
The most erroneous stories are those
we think we know best -
and therefore never scrutinize or question.
- Stephen Jay Gould
You can't move so fast that you try to change
the mores faster than people can accept it.
That doesn't mean you do nothing,
but it means that you do the things that
need to be done according to priority.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Decide questions without regard for tradition -
one way or the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Before moving on, you have to clear away your cherished beliefs.
- Dick Raymond
Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
- Michel de Montaigne
Are creeds such simple things like the clothes
which a man can change at will - and put on at will?
Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Customs do not concern themselves
with right or wrong or reason.
But they have to be obeyed;
one reasons all around them until he is tired,
but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.
- Mark Twain
In this outward and physical ceremony,
we attest once again to the inner
and spiritual strength of our Nation.
As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say:
"We must adjust to changing times,
and still hold to unchanging principles."
- Jimmy Carter
Laws are sand, customs are rock.
Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped,
but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
The penalty may be unfair, unrighteous, illogical, and a cruelty;
no matter, it will be inflicted, just the same.
Certainly, then, there can be but one wise thing
for a visiting stranger to do -
find out what the country's customs are,
and refrain from offending against them.
- Mark Twain
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -
it is the illusion of knowledge.
- Daniel J. Boorstin
Nothing is missing - Lack is an illusion.
We always have everything we truly need.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
- Ludwig Boerne
A system of morality which is based
on relative emotional values
is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
- Socrates
The distinction between the past, present and future
is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
- Albert Einstein
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein
What if it were only an illusion?
Perhaps life is not as threatening as it appears.
Perhaps the greatest threat to our serenity
is our fear of the future -
our fear of the unknown.
Perhaps, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said,
"The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone.
Only through our love and friendship can we
create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
- Orson Welles
There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We cling to our own point of view,
as though everything depended on it.
Yet our opinions have no permanence;
like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
- Zhuangzi
Life's burdens are lighter when I laugh at myself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.
- Japanese pictorial maxim (the Three Wise Monkeys)
It's not the size of the dog in the fight,
it's the size of the fight in the dog.
- Mark Twain
Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get.
- the movie Forrest Gump
A true friend is someone who
thinks that you are a good egg
even though he knows that
you are slightly cracked.
- Bernard Meltzer
Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing,
of just going along,
listening to all the things you can't hear,
and not bothering.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
- Mark Twain (attributed)
Grin your smile; giggle your laugh; unfurl your joy;
dash the last trace of your self-consciousness;
and cavort your most uninhibited play.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain,
and most fools do.
- Benjamin Franklin
Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done.
- Amelia Earhart
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
I just wish he didn't trust me so much.
- Mother Teresa
The trick is growing up without growing old.
- Casey Stengel
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong
You have enemies? Good.
That means you've stood up for something,
sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
- Oscar Wilde
"It's not that important,
don't worry about it" is the answer,
now what was the question?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Anger spells dANGER.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I'm at an age when my back goes out more than I do.
- Phyllis Diller
Stay Happy, never let anyone get your goat.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If you do what you've always done,
you'll get what you always got.
- Mark Twain
Best Friends: we're a parade - even by ourselves!
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Thank you for visiting: Tradition is the illusion of permanence. ... by Woody Allen.
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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