Tradition -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sections (TOC) : ---------------------------------- * 1 27 Words; 165 Characters * 2 25 Words; 175 Characters * 3 21 Words; 135 Characters * 4 20 Words; 112 Characters * 5 21 Words; 161 Characters * 6 8 Words; 65 Characters * 7 35 Words; 222 Characters * 8 108 Words; 640 Characters * 9 26 Words; 158 Characters * 10 55 Words; 303 Characters * 11 38 Words; 220 Characters * 12 8 Words; 59 Characters * 13 26 Words; 172 Characters * 14 26 Words; 158 Characters * 15 22 Words; 136 Characters * 16 84 Words; 445 Characters * 17 7 Words; 75 Characters * 18 50 Words; 279 Characters * 19 48 Words; 271 Characters Sections (Content) : ---------------------------------- * 1 It is the purest delusion to suppose that because an idea has been handed down from time immemorial to succeeding generations, it may not be entirely false. * 2 ....overthrow the force of barbarous prejudices, or pre-conceived opinions, which might otherwise rise up in this place in opposition to the timid efforts of truth... * 3 Fine words, an insinuating appearance, and excessive respect;-- Tso Ch'iu-ming was ashamed of them. I also am ashamed of them. * 4 The common experience of all men should teach them how easy it is to believe, what they wish to accept. * 5 Since the preparatory institutions are characterized by inflexibility, they are increasingly out of contact with the changing contours of the economy... * 6 ...book education... is the smallest and least useful... * 7 Consider the blind submission of the ancient philosophers to the several masters in each school, and you will be convinced, that little good could be expected from a hundred centuries of such a servile philosophy. * 8 Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fathers were slaves. The makers of our creeds were ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we have, has upon it the mark of whip, the rust of chain, and the ashes of fagot. Our fathers reasoned with instruments of torture. They believed in the logic of fire and sword. They hated reason. They despised thought. They abhorred liberty. Superstition is the child of slavery. Free thought will give us truth. When all have the right to think and to express their thoughts, every brain will give to all the best it has. The world will then be filled with intellectual wealth. * 9 ...how can a social custom claim precedence over the undying material of the senses and the emotions of man, over the very generating forces of life? * 10 Contrary to their fashionable phrases about the need to face change, those who proclaim themselves to be in the vanguard of new thought prove to be in the iron clutch of economic dogma, much of it provided by famous economists of the past as a guide to policy in a world different from our own. * 11 Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance. * 12 Often the root of tradition is beyond explanation. * 13 For all its ferocious ignorance, an uncultivated mentality is preferable to minds that have been poisoned by privilege and eroded by the routine grind of learning. * 14 Respect for the elders and their way of doing things was the essence of the principle. This was not an attitude that encouraged innovation or change. * 15 ...the real obstacle with which we had to cope was the crass weight of prejudice and the immense stability of old institutions. * 16 We are regimented by conventions. Habits and customs control us. We are ever afraid of the untried, of the unknown. Instead of making of life a wide expanse of social development we allow ourselves to be herded into narrow tracks through fear of conventions. We are the victims of habit, not only of action but of thought. Our parents thought so and so; and we think so and so. The world expects us to do so and so, and so and so we do. * 17 ...established habits and old prejudices... prevent innovations... * 18 No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent, and had nothing to put under the serpent. * 19 It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea. Events : ---------------------------------- Tradition -- Added : April 13, 2020 About This Textfile : ---------------------------------- Text file generated from : http://RevoltSource.com/