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The destroyers wear nihilism like a cockade -- they think they destroy because they are radicals. But they destroy because they’re disappointed conservatives -- let down by the ancient dream of a perfect society of squarable circles, where conflict is cancelled out. But there is no such place, that’s why it’s called utopia. Until we stop killing our way towards it, we won’t be grown up as human beings. Our meaning doesn’t depend on us transcending the imperfect reality we’ve got. How we live it is our meaning, in our time. We have no other.
-- Alexander Herzen in Tom Stoppard’s play The Coast of Utopia
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