Thomas Sowell on traditions

For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.

~ Thomas Sowell

Friedrich Hayek on the civilized and beastly characteristics of man

Yet so far as we know, all currently civilised groups appear to possess a similar capacity for acquiring civilisation and culture by learning certain traditions.  Thus it hardly seems possible that civilisation and culture are genetically determined and transmitted.  They have to be learnt by all alike through tradition.

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This gradual replacement of innate responses by learnt rules increasingly distinguished man from other animals, although the propensity to instinctive mass action remains one of the several beastly characteristics that man has retained.

~ Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit