Tradition matters because it is not given to societies to proceed through history as if they hade no past and as if every course of action were available to them. They may deviate from previous trajectory only within a finite margin.

The great statesmen act at the outer limit of that margin. If they fall short, the society stagnates. If they exceed it, they lose the capacity to shape posterity.

– Henry Kissinger, World Order, 2014.