It is pulling the rug. Closing the door on an individual. Or a group. A harsh act that prevents participation. It severs connections. It can be social. Economic. Racial. Or based on any difference. It creates **invisible margins**. It breeds frustration. Isolation. And deprives society of its full potential. These sayings shed light on this dark aspect of human behavior.
“Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you, or quietly drops you.”
“Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease.”
