Chronological Snobbery Quotes

“If you assume that the new - and simply because it's new - is always to be better than the old, chances are you've never known anything valuable.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I respect traditional people - they have the eyes which see value in the tarnished. This is a gift in itself. Tradition requires a wealth of discipline in order to be adhered to, hence it is rarely found in youth.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I fear that we live in an ahistorical age in which we believe that we are so wise that we no longer need the lessons of the past, perhaps most disturbingly of all that technology has put us beyond the lessons of the past.”
― J. Rufus Fears, Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life

“We often hear about stepping outside ourselves, but rarely about stepping outside our generation.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I am not convinced within myself that to its core and as a whole, humanity has, as some like to assume, progressed a great deal over the millennia. Human technology? Of course. Human beings? Hardly.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“In the first place [Barfield] made short work of what I have called my "chronological snobbery," the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find out why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also a "period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

“Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually - greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“The most recent is not necessarily the best. It is still on trial, and has yet to be assessed properly.”
― CS Lewis

“A distaste for the new is not always fear of the unknown, but sometimes ambition. Some people don't like the new way simply because they never got a chance to master the old way.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Another factor that seems to me to be equally important is the great myth and rationale of 'the modern,' that it places dynamite at the foot of old error and levels its shrines and monuments. Contempt for the past surely accounts for a consistent failure to consult it.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self

“Lewis had experienced more trauma than most of his modern readers ever will.”
― Alister E. McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life