Man a Machine (1747)
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 15
Preface
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970)
Book VIII 1337b.5 http://books.google.com/books?id=ZrDWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA245&dq=%22absorb+and+degrade+the+mind%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=c6NaUbatEYWp4AOWp4CoBA&ved=0CHYQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=%22absorb%20and%20degrade%20the%20mind%22&f=false, 1885 edition
Politics
Context: There can be no doubt that children should be taught those useful things which are really necessary, but not all things, for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgarizing them. And any occupation, art, or science which makes the body, or soul, or mind of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise of virtue is vulgar; wherefore we call those arts vulgar which tend to deform the body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind. There are also some liberal arts quite proper for a freeman to acquire, but only in a certain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, in order to attain perfection in them, the same evil effects will follow.
Book I, Chapter VII
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)
“Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided.”
As quoted in Seeking Peace : Notes and Conversations Along the Way (1998) by Johann Christoph Arnold, p. 155
Context: Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided. Yet time and time again one hears it said that since we have been put into a conflicting world, we have to adapt to it. Oddly, this completely unchristian idea is most often espoused by so-called Christians, of all people. How can we expect a righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
Lord Darlington, Act I
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Source: Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1904, p. 22
Wang Ju-hsuan (2015) cited in " Chu's running mate: 'We're all in same boat' http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201511180030.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 18 November 2015.
“White people love playing ‘divide & rule’. We should not play their game.”
Twitter post reproduced in Daily Telegraph, 5 Jan 2012 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/8994068/Diane-Abbott-White-people-love-playing-divide-and-rule.html
2010s, 2012
1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic principles. These principles are that each man is to be treated on his worth as a man without regard to the land from which his forefathers came and without regard to the creed which he professes. If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here we have had a virgin continent on which to try the experiment of making out of divers race stocks a new nation and of treating all the citizens of that nation in such a fashion as to preserve them equality of opportunity in industrial, civil, and political life. Our duty is to secure each man against any injustice by his fellows.
