It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Tradition and innovation are both essential for art to thrive; one provides guidance while the other brings vitality.
Winston Churchill's quote emphasizes the importance of both tradition and innovation in the realm of art. Without the guidance and foundational knowledge provided by tradition, art becomes directionless and aimless, akin to a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Conversely, without innovation, art becomes stagnant and lifeless, much like a corpse, as it fails to evolve and reflect the dynamic nature of humanity and society. Together, tradition and innovation create a balance that enables art to flourish and inspire.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of the arts in education, one might quote Churchill to highlight the balance needed between honoring the past and encouraging new ideas.
More from Winston Churchill
All quotes βThe United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
Similar quotes
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In literature imitations do not imitate.
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Pictures, regardless of how they are created and recreated, are intended to be looked at. This brings to the forefront not the technology of imaging, which of course is important, but rather what we might call the eyenology (seeing).
A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.
Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.