quotations about custom
When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
JOHN LOCKE
First Treatise of Government
The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Paradiso
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,
Because deliver'd down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing!
WILLIAM COWPER
The Task
How many unjust and wicked things are sanctioned by custom.
TERENCE
attributed, Day's Collacon
'Tis base,
And argues a low spirit, to be taught
By customs, and to let the vulgar grow
To our example.
ROBERT MEAD
The Combat of Love and Friendship
Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Individuality
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
preface, Killing For Sport
I cannot draw a distinction as to what length of time will render a practice legal.
C. J. DALLAS
Butt v. Conant, 1828
The constant pressure of custom; the effects of imitation, of education, and of habit; the incalculable influence of man on man, produce a working uniformity of conviction more effectually than the gallows and the stake, though without the cruelty, and with far more than the wisdom that have usually been vouchsafed to official persecutors.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
My normal isn't your normal, and your normal isn't anyone else's normal. In fact, on this journey called life, normal isn't normal.
TYEISHA BREWER-FIELDS
Normal By Whose Standards?
Cast away the bondage and the fear of rotten custom.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
Sonnets
For the customs of the peoples are delusion;
Because it is wood cut from the forest,
The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool.
They decorate it with silver and with gold;
They fasten it with nails and with hammers
So that it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them,
For they can do no harm,
Nor can they do any good.
BIBLE
Jeremiah 10:3-5
Those who live not by law would be justified by Custom: but, as common practice is the worst teacher that ever was, so the truth and goodness of things is not to be estimated by the entertainment and acceptance they find in the world.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Custom calls me to 't:
What custom wills, in all things should we do't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heap't
For truth to o'erpeer.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus
Man might be described as a custom-making animal with more justice than by many of the short descriptions. In whatever way a man has done anything once, he has a tendency to do it again: if he has done it several times he has a great tendency so to do it, and what is more, he has a great tendency to make others do it also. He transmits his formed customs to his children by example and by teaching. This is true now of human nature, and will always be true, no doubt. But what is peculiar in early societies is that over most of these customs there grows sooner or later a semi-supernatural sanction. The whole community is possessed with the idea that if the primal usages of the tribe be broken, harm unspeakable will happen in ways you cannot think of, and from sources you cannot imagine.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Custom is the first check on tyranny; that fixed routine of social life at which modern innovations chafe, and by which modern improvement is impeded, is the primitive check on base power.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none.
HENRY FIELDING
The Wedding-Day
Man is made of the wholly common, and custom is his nurse; woe then to them who lay irreverent hands on his old house-furniture, the dear inheritance from his forefathers: For time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
The Death of Wallenstein
Just because you have become accustomed to a thing, does not make it right.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
When a custom is actually proved to exist, the next enquiry is into the legality of it; for if it is not a good custom it ought to be no longer used.
WILLIAM BLACKSTONE
Commentaries on the Laws of England