“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”

—  Jay Gould

Frequently attributed, often in the context of strikebreaking activities during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. See for example Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 2‎ - Page 50 (1975). A contemporary source has not been identified. Varying forms of the quotation circulated in the labor press as early as 1893, with or without the attribution to Gould.
Attributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." by Jay Gould?
Jay Gould photo
Jay Gould 10
American businessman 1836–1892

Related quotes

Emily Brontë photo
Pierre Corneille photo

“One half of my life has put the other half in the grave.”

La moitié de ma vie a mis l’autre au tombeau.
Chimène, act III, scene iii.
Le Cid (1636)

Michael Bloomberg photo

“On his performance in college: "I was the one of those students who made the top half of the class possible."”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.tufts.edu/home/feature/?p=commencement2007&p4=4
Education

Francois Rabelais photo
Bernard of Clairvaux photo

“It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

On Grace & Free Choice, chap 14.(de Gratia Et Libero Arbitrio), Daniel O'Donovan, trans., Introduction, Bernard McGinn, Cistercian Publications, 1988, p. 37. https://books.google.com/books?id=ODcqAAAAYAAJ&q=%22not+as+if+grace+did+one+half+of+the+work+and+free+choice+the+other%22&dq=%22not+as+if+grace+did+one+half+of+the+work+and+free+choice+the+other%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT7I76jK_TAhUFNiYKHZrCB3gQ6AEIODAE (Note: Fr. Harry J. McSorley, C.S.P. Commenting on this teaching of Bernard, states: "We are indebted to Bernard of Clairvaux … for the clarification that grace and free will are not related as partial causes - which would be a false synergism - but as total causes of the act of justification, each on its own proper plane. Bernard maintains the Catholic-Augustinian tradition by insisting that man's natural freedom (liberum arbitrium) remains even after the fall. It is a wretched, but nonetheless integral free will. This natural freedom of the will, possessed by the just and sinners alike, enables us to will, but not to will what is good. It is grace alone that gives us good will." Luther, Right or Wrong, (1969), Newman Press / Augsburg Publishing House, p. 133 https://books.google.com/books?id=KaRAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA133&dq=%22for+the+clarification+that+grace+and+free+will+are+not+related+as+partial+causes%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX5fjGjK_TAhUKRSYKHdmfBCsQ6AEIIjAA#v=onepage&q=%22for%20the%20clarification%20that%20grace%20and%20free%20will%20are%20not%20related%20as%20partial%20causes%22&f=false
Context: It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice – with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.

William Shakespeare photo
Charles Baudelaire photo

“Modernity is the transitory, fugitive, contingent, is but one half of art, of which the other half is the eternal and immutable.”

La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié est l’éternel et l’immuable.
IV: "La modernite" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Modernit%C3%A9
Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)

Jack Kirby photo

“I can’t get over this guy. He creates 100 villains at a sitting and then kills off half of them. Any one of these villains I can make a million off of.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

Source: Stan Lee, “1993: Jack Kirby: The Hardest Working Man in Comics by Steve Pastis” https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/category/interview/, Happening Magazine, (1993) by Steve Pastin; as quoted by Rand Hoppe, The Kirby Effect The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, (28 April 2018).

E. W. Howe photo

“The trouble in the world is nearly all due to the fact that one-half of the people are men, and the other half women.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p193.

Joseph Joubert photo

“Half myself mocks the other half.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Related topics