Tradition does not mean a ...

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

Quotes from the same author

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.
Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.
The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.