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Tradition is the illusion of permanence.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
Related topics: Cute Whimsey Cynical Movie Change
I'm going to go in the bathroom and scream.
I'll be out in a minute.
- the Woody Allen movie What's New Pussycat
You have to learn to push the guilt
under the rug and move on,
otherwise it overwhelms you.
- the Woody Allen movie Match Point
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
- the Woody Allen movie Stardust Memories
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage
is being able to make a right turn on a red light.
- 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
I don't believe in the after life,
although I am bringing a change of underwear.
- Woody Allen
All people know the same truth.
Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
The most important words in the English language
are not "I love you" but "It's benign."
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
I've become the person I've always hated, but I'm happier.
- the Woody Allen movie Celebrity
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
- Woody Allen
I think you're the opposite of a paranoid.
I think you go around with the insane delusion that people like you.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
I have a very low threshold of death.
My doctor says I can't have bullets enter my body at any time.
- the Woody Allen movie Casino Royale
I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year
for cheating on my metaphysics final ...
I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall
I'm awash in self-contempt!
- the Woody Allen movie Celebrity
Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
- Woody Allen
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)
The food at this place is really terrible ...
and such small portions.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall
You want to do mankind a real service?
Tell funnier jokes.
- the Woody Allen movie Stardust Memories (1980)
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?
In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
- Woody Allen
There's nothing wrong with being afraid.
We were meant to be afraid.
- the Woody Allen movie Anything Else
The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have,
instead of what you don't have.
- Woody Allen
Money is better than poverty,
if only for financial reasons.
- Woody Allen
You have no values. With you its all nihilism,
cynicism, sarcasm, and orgasm.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
The lion and the calf shall lie down together,
but the calf won't get much sleep.
- Woody Allen
One minute you're in the lunchroom at Glenwood High
and you ... blink and you're 40,
you blink again and you can see movies
at half price on a senior citizen's pass.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, or to put it more accurately,
ask not for whom the toilet flushes.
- the Woody Allen movie Celebrity
Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.
- Woody Allen
Life ... full of loneliness, and misery,
and suffering, and unhappiness,
and it's all over much too quickly.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall
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
It's just gossip, you know. Gossip is the new pornography.
- the Woody Allen movie Manhattan (1979)
Before moving on, you have to clear away your cherished beliefs.
- Dick Raymond
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
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
Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
- Michel de Montaigne
Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is ever absolutely "wrong."
"Wrong" is in the cultural tradition of the beholder.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.
- Terry Goodkind
The most dangerous phrase in the language is,
"We've always done it this way."
- Grace Hopper
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
- Joseph Addison
The inherent nature of God
is not changed by our individual beliefs,
our religious institutions,
or our communal traditions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
Most people don't CHOOSE their value system -
they simply inherit the beliefs of their parents and community.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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 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
Re-examine all that you have been told...
dismiss that which insults your soul.
- Walt Whitman
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed.
- Thomas Jefferson
Let reason trump tradition and the opinions of others,
but let your own sense of what is Right trump even reason.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Honor tradition AND question tradition.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
We shape our dwellings, and afterwards
our dwellings shape us.
- Winston Churchill
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
Trumpet in a herd of elephants;
crow in the company of cocks;
bleat in a flock of goats.
- Malayan Proverb
Nothing is more dangerous to tradition
than the creative imagination of youth.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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
Do not let spacious plans for a new world
divert your energies from saving
what is left of the old.
- Winston Churchill
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
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
Tradition is like a second-hand store.
It is best to sort carefully
between the treasures and the trash.
See everything with new eyes.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Without tradition, art is a
flock of sheep without a shepherd.
Without innovation, it is a corpse.
- Winston Churchill
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
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
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -
it is the illusion of knowledge.
- Daniel J. Boorstin
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
There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Thank you for visiting: Tradition is the illusion of permanence. ... by Woody Allen.
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Jonathan Lockwood Huie
"The Philosopher of Happiness" - is the author of 100 Secrets for Living a Life You Love, co-author of Simply An Inspired Life, speaker, personal coach, and creator of the popular Daily Inspiration - Daily Quote free email.>
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