Oral Traditions Quotes & Sayings

The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West. — Harold Innis

But for my money, and for my understanding of Jung and depth psychology, the stories of the Bible (and all sacred texts and oral traditions) emerged out of the collective unconscious. Paradoxically, this doesn't make them any less valuable. It makes them much more valuable to us, because they reveal to us the nature of being human, which is the purpose of religion.
If religion is about the business of helping us to become human, then these sacred stories are about how to be human. That is what religion is. To me, the idea that these myths welled up out of the collective unconscious is a liberating and empowering realization. I get it now! What a relief! — J. Pittman McGehee

John Lilly suggests whales are a culture maintained by oral traditions. Stories. The experience of an individual whale is valuable to the survival of its community. I think of my family stories - Mother's in particular - how much I need them now, how much I will need them later. It has been said when an individual dies, whole worlds die with them. The same could be said of each passing whale. — Terry Tempest Williams

A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside. — Peter Thiel

Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth. — Jared Diamond

Oral musical traditions are rooted in assured and scrupulous faith. — Franz Liszt

It is in the oral traditions of the villages that the arts of India are really alive. The brief Western immortality of museums is pointless to people who have seen eternity in their earth. — Santha Rama Rau

What are we after when we open one of those books? What is it that makes a classic a classic? ... in old-fashioned terms, the answer is that it wll elevate your spirit. And that's why I can't take much stock in the idea of going through a list of books or 'covering' a fixed number of selections, or anyway striving for the blessed state of having read this, or the other. Having read a book means nothing. Reading a book may be the most tremendous experience of your life; having read it is an item in your memory, part of your receding past ... Why we have that odd faith in the magic of having read a book, I don't know. We don't apply the same principle elsewhere: We don't believe in having heard Mendelssohn's violin concerto ...
I say, don't read the classics
try to discover your own classics; every life has its own. — Rudolf Flesch

Deception, I came to realize, was one of the few remaining oral traditions. — Alex Stone

The discovery of America was the foundational event of the Scientific Revolution. It not only taught Europeans to favour present observations over past traditions, but the desire to conquer America also obliged Europeans to search for new knowledge at breakneck speed. If they really wanted to control the vast new territories, they had to gather enormous amounts of new data about the geography, climate, flora, fauna, languages, cultures and history of the new continent. Christian Scriptures, old geography books and ancient oral traditions were of little help. — Yuval Noah Harari

My background is deep and set in deep time, and in a narrow space, oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis. — Alan Garner

We have oral traditions in Mali, and songs are passed down and around this way. I think in the US you can play all the time in your own room and never see another musician your whole life. We can't understand that in Mali. — Vieux Farka Toure

I could have spoken from Rhode Island where I have been staying ... But I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson, and of Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the action I was compelled today to make and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders of the federal court at Little Rock can be executed without unlawful interference. (On sending troops to enforce integration in Little Rock AR High School) — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Revenge seeks its pound of flesh. That's one fifth of my erection. — Jarod Kintz

I've never felt so bereft and panicky. What do I do without my phone? How do I function? My hand keeps automatically reaching for my phone in its usual place in my pocket. Every instinct in me wants to text someone, 'OMG, I've lost my phone! ' but how can do that without a bloody phone? — Sophie Kinsella

Douglas Hyde's Beside the Fire, William Butler Yeats's The Celtic Twilight, Lady Augusta Gregory's Visions and Beliefs of the West of Ireland, and Standish O'Grady's collections not only established Irish folklore as one of the great oral literature traditions of Western civilization, but also provided an immense source of pride for the growing Irish Nationalist movement. Even — Ryan Hackney

Many myths and religions have some kind of threat of retribution from their god or gods, and their doctrines warn of the dangers of doing various forbidden things. Why? Because memes involving danger are the ones we pay attention to! As oral traditions developed, our brains were set up to amplify the dangers and give them greater significance than the rest. — Richard Brodie

Although it is tempting to imagine an ancient era innocent of biochemical weaponry, in fact this Pandora's box of horrors was opened thousands of years ago. The history of making war with biological weapons begins in mythology, in ancient oral traditions that preserved records of actual events and ideas of the era before the invention of written histories. — Adrienne Mayor

Children are the angels that the gods give us. — Avijeet Das

What I really had was stories, the oral traditions of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A dream world told to me from my parents in the living room. — Juan Felipe Herrera

What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it. - A substance in a cushion — Gertrude Stein

The bottom line is that for Wellhausen and many other biblical scholars before and since, the Pentateuch as we know it (an important qualification) was not completed until the postexilic period (after the Israelites were allowed to return to their homeland from Babylon beginning in 539 BC). There were certainly long-standing written documents and oral traditions that the postexilic Israelites drew upon, which biblical scholars continue to discuss vigorously, but the Pentateuch as we know it was formed as a response to the Babylonian exile. The specifics of Wellhausen's work no longer dominate the academic landscape, but the postexilic setting for the Pentateuch is the dominant view among biblical scholars today. — Peter Enns

Augustus: "You probably need some rest."
Me: "I'm okay."
Augustus: "Okay." (Pause.) "What are you thinking about?"
Me: "You."
Augustus: "What about me?"
Me: "'I do not know which to prefer, / The beauty of inflections / Or the beauty of innuendos, / The blackbird whistling / Or just after.'"
Augustus: "God, you are sexy."
Me: "We could go to your room."
Augustus: "I've heard worse ideas. — John Green

I'm going to be singing Dreams and Rhiannon when I'm 75 - and that's just fine with me. I just hope my chiffon doesn't get tangled in my rocking chair. — Stevie Nicks

patriarch over all of the land's inhabitants. Hillel's appointment ushers in an exciting period of creativity in developing the Oral Law, alongside the preservation of ancient traditions. Together, these two ideals serve as Hillel's guiding light: he expounds based on the rules of logic and simultaneously apprentices under the — Binyamin Lau