“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 Barzun46
Historian 1907–2012Related quotes
Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor
Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!
“It is intolerable that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief.”
Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman
Fox on George III in a letter to Mr. Fitzpatrick (9 September 1781), quoted in John Brooke, George III (Panther, 1974), pp. 363-364.
1780s
William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)
Speech to the Lotus Club (16 November 1912).
James E. Lovelock (1919) independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist
Interview with The Guardian (29 March 2010)
L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology
Manual Of Justice (1959).
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet
30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: The relation of thought to action filled my mind on waking, and I found myself carried toward a bizarre formula, which seems to have something of the night still clinging about it: Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious. It seemed to me that our most trifling actions, of eating, walking, and sleeping, were the condensation of a multitude of truths and thoughts, and that the wealth of ideas involved was in direct proportion to the commonness of the action (as our dreams are the more active, the deeper our sleep). We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries are contained in what we see and do every day. In all spontaneity the work of creation is reproduced in analogy. When the spontaneity is unconscious, you have simple action; when it is conscious, intelligent and moral action.