Autobiography is awfully seductive; it’s wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass – the slave narrative – speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying ‚I,‘ meaning ‚we.‘

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

It is the duty of every thoughtful Indian not to marry. In case he is helpless in regard to marriage, he should abstain from sexual intercourse with his wife.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

I got a chain letter by fax. It’s very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.

I felt we must separate political responsibility. The Dalai Lama should not carry that burden. So that is my selfish reason – to protect the old Dalai Lama tradition. It is safer without political involvement.

My parents had us in church every Sunday, every Wednesday. It was more of a tradition at that point; I didn’t have a personal relationship with the Lord until I went to the altar call one Sunday, and the youth pastor told us to make a decision for ourselves.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.

I’m the proof – you can’t throw away tradition.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

Don’t bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

One aim of the Boy Scouts scheme is to revive amongst us, if possible, some of the rules of the knights of old.

I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you’re 52.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death.

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Becoming a ‚Sir‘ is slightly uncomfortable at first, although it is a considerable honor. It is amazing how quickly you become accustomed to it.

For 20 years, Simon & Schuster asked me, ‚Why don’t you write your autobiography?‘

Free institutions certainly exist, but a tradition of passivity and conformism restricts their use – a cynic might say that this is why they continue to exist.

All great peoples are conservative.

I don’t travel with them, but they can’t be missing in my home. There have to always be dominoes… I used to play with my family – dad, my grandpa, my uncles.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

A lot of churches have not moved with the times.

I was baptized by my father when I was 4 years old.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

I have spent every New Year’s Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It’s a place with meaning for me.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

Get off your horse and drink your milk.

I don’t want to write an autobiography because I would become public property with no privacy left.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.