“If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.”

— Harriet Martineau

Women, vol. 3, Society in America (1837).

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Harriet Martineau 6

English writer and sociologist 1802–1876

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 334

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

Pierre Corneille Le Cid

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

“It is literally true that the toleration of banks of paper discount costs the United States one-half their war taxes; or, in other words, doubles the expenses of every war. Now think but for a moment, what a change of condition that would be, which should save half our war expenses, require but half the taxes, and enthral us in debt but half the time.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

ME 13:364
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

“Too civil by half.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan The Rivals

Act III, sc. iv.
The Rivals (1775)

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

Jay Gould (1836–1892) American businessman

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

“The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect.”

Avram Davidson book The Phoenix and the Mirror

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 10

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

Charles Baudelaire Le Peintre de la vie moderne

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)