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
Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.
She didn't even have to smile, and she rarely did outside her house--it was the eyes, her dancer's carriage, the way she seemed to deliberate over the smallest movement of her body.
I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.
Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy. Marilyn Monroe, because she was a curvy woman. I'm drawn to things that have the same kind of silhouettes as what she wore because our bodies are similar.
When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.
The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.