This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"For we must not misunderstand ourselves; we are as much automatic as intellectual; and hence it comes that the instrument by which conviction is attained is not demonstrated alone. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs only convince the mind. Custom is the source of our strongest and most believed proofs. It bends the automaton, which persuades the mind without its thinking about the matter." - Blaise Pascal
"Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted." - Blaise Pascal
"Custom is the law of one description of fools and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash; for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The pressure that has been brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit has caused a reaction more destructive than war, and the injury has not only affected the Indian, but has extended to the white population as well. Tyranny, stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the “Indian Problem.”" -
"Custom adapts itself to expediency." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
"Decency - generosity - cooperation - assistance in trouble - devotion to duty; these are the things that are of greater value than surface appearances and custom." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Custom reconciles us to everything." - Edmund Burke
"Custom without reason is but ancient error." - English Proverbs
"Custom in the end becomes men's nature." - Evenus or Evenus of Paros, alt. Euenus NULL
"Custom is the most perfect when it beginneth in young years: this we call education; which is, in effect, but an early custom." - Francis Bacon
"Men commonly think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and imbibed opinions, but generally act according to custom." - Francis Bacon
"We think according to nature; we speak according to rules; but we act according to custom." - Francis Bacon
"Mere customary life (the watch wound up and going on of itself) is that which brings on natural death. Custom is activity without opposition, for which there remains only a formal duration; in which the fullness and zest that originally characterized the aim of life are out of the question - a merely external sensuous existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason." - George Santayana
"All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above a ground." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Experience is the mother of custom." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Every custom was once an eccentricity; every idea was once an absurdity." - Holbrook Jackson, fully George Holbrook Jackson
"Every custom was once an eccentricity." - Holbrook Jackson, fully George Holbrook Jackson
"Both poetry and philosophy are prodigal of eulogy over the mind which ransoms itself by its own energy from a captivity to custom, which breaks the common bounds of empire, and cuts a Simplon over mountains of difficulty for its own purpose, whether of good or of evil." - Horace Mann
"The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement." - John Stuart Mill
"The effect of custom, in preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on one another, is all the more complete because the subject is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to others or by each to himself." - John Stuart Mill
"The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom." - John Stuart Mill
"The progressive principle is antagonistic to the sway of custom. The contest between these two principles, custom and progress, constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind." - John Stuart Mill
"Morality is made up of customs and habits. Custom makes public morality, and habit individual morality." - Joseph Joubert
"We overcome in all human affairs the inertia of custom. Custom is a great enemy of progress" - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
"Custom is king over all." - Pindar NULL
"Not only custom but nature also affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality." - Plato NULL
"We are more sensible of what is done against custom than of what is done against nature." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Choose always the way that seems best, however rough it may be, and custom will soon render it easy and agreeable." - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
"Choose the life that is best, and constant habit will make it pleasant. [Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be; custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.]" - Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
"In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities... There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand that this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible." - Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
"Custom governs all things." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Custom doth make dotards of us all." - Thomas Carlyle
"What is Philosophy but a continual battle against Custom?" - Thomas Carlyle
"Custom is the Plague of wise Men, and the Idol of Fools." - Thomas Fuller
"Custom is the Guide of the Ignorant." - Thomas Fuller
"Custom is generally too hard for Conscience. Custom is the Guide of the Ignorant. Custom without Reason, is but an ancient Error." - Thomas Fuller
"Old custom without truth is but an old error." - Thomas Fuller
"The pressure that has been brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit has caused a reaction more destructive than war, and the injury has not only affected the Indian, but has extended to the white population as well. Tyranny, stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the “Indian Problem.”" - Chief Luther Standing Bear
"A custom of the world is so that we don’t see in a sea of mysteries the shores." - Ferdowsi or Firdausi or Firdusi, formally Hakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdowsī Tūsī, born Abu Ol-Qasem Mansur NULL
"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift or law there is far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a national philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society. " - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth." - Johann Georg Zimmermann
"Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error, or rather that common consent in vice which these worthy men would have to be law." - John Calvin
"Have you not reason then to be ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof. In your abuse thereof sinning against God harming yourselves both in person and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil nations and by all strangers that come among you to be scorned and held in contempt; a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." - King James I of England
"By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes is his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion." - John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
"And yet it is hard to believe that anything in nature could stand revealed as solid matter. The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses, like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire; red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam; hard gold is softened and melted down by heat; chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid; heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold; by custom raising the cup, we feel them both as water is poured in, drop by drop, above." - Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL