The values of Athens and Jerusalem

"I understand in retrospect that this was my first introduction to a conflict that dominates all our lives: the endless, irreconcilable conflict between the values of Athens and Jerusalem. On the one hand, very approximately, is the world not of hedonism but of tolerance of the recognition that sex and love have their ironic and perverse dimensions. On the other is the stone-faced demand for continence, sacrifice, and conformity, and the devising of ever-crueler punishments for deviance, all invoked as if this very fanaticism did not give the whole game away. Repression is the problem in the first place. So, event at the cost of some momentary pain, I suppose I mich as well have learned this sooner rather than later."

Christopher Hitchens - Hitch 22, a memoir