“The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in.”

"The Bugbear of Relativism," p. 97
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
Context: The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.

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Jacques Barzun 46
Historian 1907–2012

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“We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries are contained in what we see and do every day.”

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