self-tradition

Updated: May 5, 2025

As our boarding-school days neared the end, in the consciousness of approaching separation we vowed eternal allegiance to our "early ideals," and promised each other we would "never abandon them without conscious justification," and we often warned each other of "the perils of self-tradition."

Jane Addams - Twenty Years at Hull House; with autobiographical notes

Whatever may have been the perils of self-tradition, I certainly did not escape them, for it required eight years from the time I left Rockford in the summer of 1881 until Hull-House was opened in the the autumn of 1889 to formulate my convictions even in the least satisfactory manner, much less to reduce them to a plan for action.

Jane Addams - Twenty Years at Hull House; with autobiographical notes