Arguments for the Old

Henry David Thoreau writes, "Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? ...We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old." Does moving toward modernity have to come at the cost of values? Is "the suppression of the old by the new... a general, eternal and inviolable law of the universe" as according to Mao Zedong?