Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.

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Notes from Wikiquote

in "Christianity as an enfolding circle," U.S. News & World Report (June 26, 1989), p. 57

Variants

version" Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jaroslav Pelikan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.