“Being law-abiding means filing a paper on time, not parking near a hydrant, and getting a zoning variance before moving a fence on one's own property. A world continually tighter in these ways intensifies the search for loopholes, tempts the unscrupulous to invent them, hardens the cynic, and keeps alive the urge to break loose. Such pulses of thought and feeling are bound to take away the ease and pleasure of ethical conduct. Habitual morality is baffled by the stop-and-go, and people's disregard of injunctions causes no surprise; it seems rather to show firmness of mind.”
"The Bugbear of Relativism," p. 98
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
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Jacques Barzun 46
Historian 1907–2012Related quotes
Referring to the jazz musicians who performed along with his readings
Rothenberg and Antin interview (1958)

“I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.”

Ants Marching
Remember Two Things (1993)

Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!”
Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 279).

On artists whom she had often found of rather loose morals, quoted in "Paris (1897-1904)" and in Mother India, Volume 20 (1968) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=YifkAAAAMAAJ, p. 46

Steve King: Remembering Iowa’s Sarah Root, 21-Year-Old Killed By Illegal Alien http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/24/exclusive-steve-king-remembering-iowas-sarah-root-21-year-old-killed-illegal-alien/ (May 24, 2016)

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), pp. 180-181.