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Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual. -- Steven Pinker
Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition. -- N. Scott Momaday
There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die. -- Maxine Hong Kingston
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
The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information. -- August Wilson
I grew up in Sierra Leone, in a small village where as a boy my imagination was sparked by the oral tradition of storytelling. At a very young age I learned the importance of telling stories - I saw that stories are the most potent way of seeing anything we encounter in our lives, and how we can deal with living. -- Ishmael Beah
Rap comes from the oral tradition. The oral tradition gives voice to those who would've otherwise been voiceless. -- Benjamin Zephaniah
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The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories. -- P. L. Travers
Writing with a simplified alphabet checked the power of custom of an oral tradition but implied a decline in the power of expression and the creation of grooves which determined the channels of thought of readers and later writers. -- Harold Innis
My very first lessons in the art of telling stories took place in the kitchen . . . my mother and three or four of her friends. . . told stories. . .with effortless art and technique. They were natural-born storytellers in the oral tradition. -- Paule Marshall
Following the invention of writing, the special form of heightened language, characteristic of the oral tradition and a collective society, gave way to private writing. Records and messages displaced the collective memory. Poetry was written and detached from the collective festival. -- Harold Innis
People get strange about whether you've written your own songs, which seems really stupid considering that, especially in Country Music, it's about oral tradition and passing things on and the songs weren't meant to be played by one person and then forgotten. -- Neko Case
My love of storytelling comes from oral tradition, the stories from my grandmother and conversations with [my] mother. The world is full of discussions of condensation, drifts, misunderstanding, repetition. These are the materials I work with. My debt is to these women. -- Lucrecia Martel
I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written -- Saul Williams
People say modernism killed poetry for them: it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't touch a popular musical oral tradition. Years ago, you memorized and read poetry; it was one of the things you were forced to learn. Now it has tiny role in school. -- Campbell McGrath
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
Americans, more than any other culture on earth, are cookbook cooks; we learn to make our meals not from any oral tradition, but from a text. The just-wed cook brings to the new household no carefully copied collection of the family's cherished recipes, but a spanking new edition of 'Fannie Farmer' or 'The Joy of Cooking'. -- John Thorne
Though now we think of fairy tales as stories intended for very young children, this is a relatively modern idea. In the oral tradition, magical stories were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike, while literary fairy tales (including most of the tales that are best known today) were published primarily for adult readers until the 19th century. -- Terri Windling
Gershwin's melodic gift was phenomenal. His songs contain the essence of New York in the 1920s and have deservedly become classics of their kind, part of the 20th-century folk-song tradition in the sense that they are popular music which has been spread by oral tradition (for many must have sung a Gershwin song without having any idea who wrote it). -- George Gershwin
A necessary part of our intelligence is on the line as the oral tradition becomes less and less important. There was a time throughout our land when it was common for stories to be told and retold, a most valuable exercise, for the story retold is the story reexamined over and over again at different levels of intellectual and emotional growth. -- Wes Jackson
It is suggested that all written works, including this one, have dangerous implications to the vitality of an oral tradition and to the health of a civilization, particularly if they thwart the interest of a people in culture, and following Aristotle , the cathartic effects of culture. "It is written but I say unto you" is a powerful directive to Western civilization. -- Harold Innis
I come out of a strong oral tradition in the South, -- Horton Foote
People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place. -- Irving Kristol
I would then go on to say that Homer, as we now know, was working in what they call an oral tradition. -- Robert Fitzgerald
Nowhere else is there so large and consistent a body of oral tradition about the national and mythical heroes as amongst the Gaels. -- Joseph Jacobs
Rae Chorze-Fwaz has preserved and passed on their secret meditation techniques in oral tradition from the time of Atlantis until he present day. -- Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell
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
The point is there is more information now then you can pass along comfortably in an oral tradition, say a strictly speaking culture. That is a problem. -- Jerry Garcia
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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
We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion. -- John B. S. Haldane
I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written. -- Saul Williams
I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written." -- Saul Williams
Much of my experience with language was formed in the church, which has an oral tradition. There are lots of repetitions in prayers and song refrains. There's a sense of incantation, that if you call not once and not twice but for a third time, the spirit appears. -- Alice McDermott
There's been resistance to every new technology that's ever been introduced. When books came out hundreds of years ago, there were complaints that it would destroy the oral tradition. Some of those fears were justified, but it didn't stop the rise of the written word. And books have proven to be incredibly useful. -- Jeremy Stoppelman
If you read the fables, 'Beowulf,' for example, you will know something about the person who writes them, and I like that. Secondly, they will not be about individuals; they will be about community. Thirdly, they're all about moralizing. Fourthly, the way they express themselves takes its tone from the oral tradition. -- Jim Crace
We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten. -- Meir Soloveichik
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
I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well. -- Khaled Hosseini

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