"The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall"
About this Quote
Douglas, an anthropologist of purity and pollution, is describing a classic boundary-making maneuver: turn messy social change into a legible morality play. Once the wall goes up, nuance becomes suspect. Gray areas read as contamination. Complex outsiders become “sinners,” and insiders launder themselves into “saints” by contrast. The brilliance of the phrasing is how physical it is. A wall suggests solidity and safety, but it also implies paranoia, surveillance, and a narrowing of the moral imagination.
The subtext is less “older people are intolerant” than “communities preserve themselves by manufacturing categories.” “Natural response” is doing pointed work here: Douglas isn’t excusing the impulse, she’s diagnosing it as predictable and therefore manipulable. Leaders can exploit that predictability, converting fear into boundary rituals: purity tests, loyalty language, scapegoats, symbolic bans. The wall becomes a convenient machine for identity, and identity becomes a convenient alibi for exclusion.
Read in the context of postwar upheaval, decolonization, migration, and culture-war politics, Douglas’s point feels uncomfortably contemporary. Moral walls promise order; what they deliver is a world small enough to control, and cruel enough to enforce.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Douglas, Mary. (2026, January 17). The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-natural-response-of-the-old-timers-is-to-69719/
Chicago Style
Douglas, Mary. "The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-natural-response-of-the-old-timers-is-to-69719/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The natural response of the old-timers is to build a strong moral wall against the outside. This is where the world starts to be painted in black and white, saints inside, and sinners outside the wall." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-natural-response-of-the-old-timers-is-to-69719/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.
