Quotes about divide
page 5

Thomas Jefferson photo
Dave Dellinger photo
Amir Taheri photo

“There is no evidence that a majority of Israelis want a two-state formula. In fact, if we add up votes won by all parties implicitly or explicitly opposed to the two-state formula, we will have a whopping 75 per cent of Israelis. Thus what Netanyahu mastered enough courage to say aloud is what most Israelis think in silence. The picture is hardly different on the Palestinian side. To start with, the Palestinians are divided in at least three camps. In one camp we have Fatah and its allies who have never formally committed to a two-state formula but have dropped hints that they might accept such a solution as a first step toward liberating the rest of historic Palestine, that is to say, what is now Israel, later. The second camp is dominated by Hamas, which is committed to the destruction of Israel in no uncertain terms. However, Hamas does not want a Palestinian state either. As the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a pan-Islamist group dedicated to fighting for the creation of a global caliphate. In the third camp, there are more radical Palestinian groups, including the Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, now the favored protégé of the Islamic Republic in Tehran. The IJLP leadership has repeatedly declared its support for a one-state formula sponsored by Iranian “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Who wants a two-state solution, anyway? http://nypost.com/2015/03/20/who-wants-a-two-state-solution-anyway/, New York Post (March 20, 2015).
New York Post

Pythagoras photo

“The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As reported by Alexander Polyhistor, and Diogenes Laërtius in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 30, in the translation of C. D. Yonge (1853)

Bill Clinton photo
John Ruskin photo

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

Volume II, chapter VI, section 16.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Mao Zedong photo

“History shows hat wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars, we actively participate in them. As for unjust wars, World War I is an instance in which both sides fought for imperialist interests; therefore the Communists of the whole world firmly opposed that war. The way to oppose a war of this kind is to do everything possible to prevent it before it breaks out and, once it breaks out, to oppose war with war, to oppose unjust war with just war, whenever possible.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Protracted Warfare (1938)
Original: (zh-CN) 历史上的战争分为两类,一类是正义的,一类是非正义的。一切进步的战争都是正义的,一切阻碍进步的战争都是非正义的。我们共产党人反对一切阻碍进步的非正义的战争,但是不反对进步的正义的战争。对于后一类战争,我们共产党人不但不反对,而且积极地参加。前一类战争,例如第一次世界大战,双方都是为着帝国主义利益而战,所以全世界的共产党人坚决地反对那一次战争。反对的方法,在战争未爆发前,极力阻止其爆发;既爆发后,只要有可能,就用战争反对战争,用正义战争反对非正义战争。

George W. Bush photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
John Dryden photo
Francis Escudero photo
David Cameron photo
Marcus du Sautoy photo
G. Edward Griffin photo

“The very wise and wealthy financiers of the world--going way back, even before Rothschild's time--have observed that the world was a pretty rocky place to live in, and that nations were always fighting over something or other, there was always somebody who was trying to conquer somebody else, and wars were universal. Too bad about that, but that's the way it is. So we--the bankers--found out that if we loan money to them that we'll get paid back - they don't question what the interest rate is because they're fighting a war! And if they can win the war they can just plunder the victim and pay us whatever we want out of the plunder - it doesn't cost them anything really. Then the issue comes up of what happens if one of these nations decides not to pay us? Ah! The answer is very simple: if they refuse to pay us back we'll finance an opposing nation, a revolutionary group somewhere else to become an enemy of that nation and attack it, and destroy it, invade it. We'll create another war, in other words, in order to get our money back, we'll finance this side to attack that side. And so, by financing all sides in a war, and keeping the world divided up into warring fractions so that no one unit is particularly stronger than the other, the banks can continue to finance all sides of wars forever, and always collect their interest, because they have the ability of putting one nation against another nation against another nation to collect their debts.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

From the documentary Corporate Fascism: The Destruction of America's Middle Class (2011) http://www.youtube.com/embed/hTbvoiTJKIs?autoplay=1&start=2094&end=2183

Émile Durkheim photo
Aron Ra photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“I may say Christianity itself divided into its thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind”

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

.
Letter to George Logan (12 November 1816). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, pp. 43
1810s

Augustus De Morgan photo

“In order to see the difference which exists between… studies,—for instance, history and geometry, it will be useful to ask how we come by knowledge in each. Suppose, for example, we feel certain of a fact related in history… if we apply the notions of evidence which every-day experience justifies us in entertaining, we feel that the improbability of the contrary compels us to take refuge in the belief of the fact; and, if we allow that there is still a possibility of its falsehood, it is because this supposition does not involve absolute absurdity, but only extreme improbability.
In mathematics the case is wholly different… and the difference consists in this—that, instead of showing the contrary of the proposition asserted to be only improbable, it proves it at once to be absurd and impossible. This is done by showing that the contrary of the proposition which is asserted is in direct contradiction to some extremely evident fact, of the truth of which our eyes and hands convince us. In geometry, of the principles alluded to, those which are most commonly used are—
I. If a magnitude is divided into parts, the whole is greater than either of those parts.
II. Two straight lines cannot inclose a space.
III. Through one point only one straight line can be drawn, which never meets another straight line, or which is parallel to it.
It is on such principles as these that the whole of geometry is founded, and the demonstration of every proposition consists in proving the contrary of it to be inconsistent with one of these.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Source: On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831), Ch. I.

David Graeber photo
Robert Boyle photo
José Martí photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Herman Kahn photo
Vandana Shiva photo

“Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation, and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

From the book " Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace https://books.google.co.in/books?id=iQzwwzBYGDkC&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=Earth+Democracy+connects+people+in+circles+of+care,+cooperation,+and+compassion+instead+of+dividing+them+through+competition+and+conflict,+fear+and+hatred.&source=bl&ots=ripjK7ckDs&sig=W1_86jEtUK7OfIyvDWhLeSxbIgk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIzOTt6eTDyAIVSCOOCh0SCg2u#v=onepage&q&f=false" (2005), p. 11

Thomas Jefferson photo
Thomas Bingham, Baron Bingham of Cornhill photo
Alan Moore photo
Nicholas Serota photo
Umberto Eco photo
Robert LeFevre photo

“When the government uses "divide and conquer," it sows suspicion so that the people who would naturally tend to affiliate will distrust each other. Thus, they don't affiliate. The consequence is that everyone distrusts his neighbor. But everyone trusts the government.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Rampart Institute, (Society for Libertarian Life edition), from 1977 speech, p. 23.
Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978)

Morris Raphael Cohen photo
Richard Stallman photo

“Friends share music with each other, they don't allow themselves to be divided by a system that says that nobody is supposed to have copies.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

LibrePlanet Keynote Speech (2015) @20:45 https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/richard-stallman-free-software-free-hardware/
2010s

Octavio Paz photo
Theodore Roszak photo

“Science, in broad outline, can be divided into three parts: the study of the vast, the study of the tiny, and the study of life which… acts as audience to both the vast and the tiny.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.9 Deep Community

Aristarchus of Samos photo
John Edwards photo

“And we have so much work to do in America, because all across America, there are walls … There's a wall around Washington, D. C. The American people are, today, on the outside of that wall. And on the inside are the big corporations and the lobbyists who are working to protect a system that takes care of them. … There is another wall that divides us. It's the moral shame of 37 million of our own people who wake up in poverty every single day This is not OK. And for eight long, long years, this wall has gotten taller And there's also a wall that's divided our image in the world. The America as the beacon of hope is behind that wall. And all the world sees now is a bully. They see Iraq, Guantanamo, secret prison and government that argues that water boarding is not torture. This is not OK. That wall has to come down for the sake of our ideals and our security. We can change this. We can change it. Yes we can. If we stand together, we can change it. … This is not going to be easy. It's going to be the fight of our lives. But we're ready, because we know that this election is about something bigger than the tired old hateful politics of the past. This election is about taking down these walls that divide us, so that we can see what's possible -- what's possible, that one America that we can build together.”

John Edwards (1953) American politician

Endorsement of Senator Barack Obama on May 14, 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403533.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzkAjd3xQ7w

Buckminster Fuller photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Peter Cain photo
Horace Greeley photo
Wang Ju-hsuan photo

“We've had too many divisions or stand-offs regarding the pan-blue and pan-green divide, the mainlander-Taiwanese divide and even the southern Taiwan-northern Taiwan divide. In fact, we're all in the same boat.”

Wang Ju-hsuan (1961) Taiwanese politician

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.

Enoch Powell photo
Charles de Gaulle photo

“The sword is the axis of the world and grandeur cannot be divided.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

L'épée est l'axe du monde et la grandeur ne se divise pas.
in Vers l’armée de métier.
Writings

Peter Tatchell photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“The etymological root of the word, sex, which originated around 1350 from the Middle English, sexus, means to divide.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Paul Tillich photo
Amir Taheri photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Prem Rawat photo
Sukarno photo
Marine Le Pen photo

“Now, the dividing line is not between left and right but globalists and patriots.”

Marine Le Pen (1968) French lawyer and politician

Speech of Marine Le Pen after her defeat in the French regional elections, 2015, The Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com/articles/we-arent-the-world-1483728161

Wilhelm Wundt photo

“In Aristotle the mind, regarded as the principle of life, divides into nutrition, sensation, and faculty of thought, corresponding to the inner most important stages in the succession of vital phenomena.”

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) German physician, physiologist, philosopher and professor

Source: Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1904, p. 22

Ture Nerman photo
Joseph Addison photo
Horace Greeley photo

“The masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which has so long divided them.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

Acceptance of Liberal Republican nomination as President (29 May 1872)
1870s

Joseph Strutt photo

“A number of little birds, to the amount, I believe, of twelve or fourteen, being taken from different cages, were placed upon a table in the presence of the spectators; and there they formed themselves into ranks like a company of soldiers: small cones of paper bearing some resemblance to grenadiers caps were put upon their heads, and diminutive imitations of muskets made with wood, secured under their left wings. Thus equipped, they marched to and fro several times; when a single bird was brought forward, supposed to be a deserter, and set between six of the musketeers, three in a row, who conducted him from the top to the bottom of the table, on the middle of which a small brass cannon charged with a little gunpowder had been previously placed, and the deserter was situated in the front part of the cannon; his guards then divided, three retiring on one side, and three on the other, and he was left standing by himself. Another bird was immediately produced; and, a lighted match being put into one of his claws, he hopped boldly on the other to the tail of the cannon, and, applying the match to the priming, discharged the piece without the least appearance of fear or agitation. The moment the explosion took place, the deserter fell down, and lay, apparently motionless, like a dead bird; but, at the command of his tutor he rose again; and the cages being brought, the feathered soldiers were stripped of their ornaments, and returned into them in perfect order.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 250
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Diane Abbott photo

“White people love playing ‘divide & rule’. We should not play their game.”

Diane Abbott (1953) British Labour Party politician

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

Adam Smith photo
James Jeans photo
Frederick Buechner photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Karl Kraus photo
Svetlana Alliluyeva photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
John Gray photo

“The result of toppling tyranny in divided countries is usually civil war and ethnic cleansing.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

"The death of this crackpot creed is nothing to mourn," http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/31/comment.politics1 The Guardian (2007-07-31)

Bernhard Riemann photo

“Let us imagine that from any given point the system of shortest lines going out from it is constructed; the position of an arbitrary point may then be determined by the initial direction of the geodesic in which it lies, and by its distance measured along that line from the origin. It can therefore be expressed in terms of the ratios dx0 of the quantities dx in this geodesic, and of the length s of this line. …the square of the line-element is \sum (dx)^2 for infinitesimal values of the x, but the term of next order in it is equal to a homogeneous function of the second order… an infinitesimal, therefore, of the fourth order; so that we obtain a finite quantity on dividing this by the square of the infinitesimal triangle, whose vertices are (0,0,0,…), (x1, x2, x3,…), (dx1, dx2, dx3,…). This quantity retains the same value so long as… the two geodesics from 0 to x and from 0 to dx remain in the same surface-element; it depends therefore only on place and direction. It is obviously zero when the manifold represented is flat, i. e., when the squared line-element is reducible to \sum (dx)^2, and may therefore be regarded as the measure of the deviation of the manifoldness from flatness at the given point in the given surface-direction. Multiplied by -¾ it becomes equal to the quantity which Privy Councillor Gauss has called the total curvature of a surface. …The measure-relations of a manifoldness in which the line-element is the square root of a quadric differential may be expressed in a manner wholly independent of the choice of independent variables. A method entirely similar may for this purpose be applied also to the manifoldness in which the line-element has a less simple expression, e. g., the fourth root of a quartic differential. In this case the line-element, generally speaking, is no longer reducible to the form of the square root of a sum of squares, and therefore the deviation from flatness in the squared line-element is an infinitesimal of the second order, while in those manifoldnesses it was of the fourth order. This property of the last-named continua may thus be called flatness of the smallest parts. The most important property of these continua for our present purpose, for whose sake alone they are here investigated, is that the relations of the twofold ones may be geometrically represented by surfaces, and of the morefold ones may be reduced to those of the surfaces included in them…”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

Warren Farrell photo
Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“For friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.”
Nam et secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Section 22
Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)

Peter Kropotkin photo
Sarah Palin photo

“Mr. President, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all who commit to ending any racial divide, no more playing the race card.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152172510828588&set=a.10150723283643588.424640.24718773587&type=1&stream_ref=10, , quoted in * 2014-01-20
Robin Abcarian
On MLK Day, tone-deaf Sarah Palin says Obama plays the race card
The Takeaway
LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-on-mlk-day-tonedeaf-sarah-palin-says-obama-plays-the-race-card-20140120,0,3099194.story
2014

Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“Going through the pain barrier, that's what makes the muscles grow. There's this pain, this aching, and going on and on and on. That's what divides a champion from a non-champion - having the guts to go through the pain barrier.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Will he be back? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/28/arnold-schwarzenegger-california-terminator-budget-deficit, The Guardian, (May 2009)
2000s

Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Aldo Capitini photo
Mahinda Rajapaksa photo
Lewis Pugh photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, The Conservative (1841)
Context: The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world. The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times. The war rages not only in battle-fields, in national councils and ecclesiastical synods, but agitates every man’s bosom with opposing advantages every hour. On rolls the old world meantime, and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities.
Such an irreconcilable antagonism of course must have a correspondent depth of seat in the human constitution. It is the opposition of Past and Future, of Memory and Hope, of the Understanding and the Reason. It is the primal antagonism, the appearance in trifles of the two poles of nature.

Immortal Technique photo
Van Jones photo

“The end of the occupation. The right of return of the Palestinian people. These are critical dividing lines in human rights. We have to be here. No American would put up with an Israeli-style occupation of their hometown for 53 days let alone 54 years. US tax dollars are funding violence against people of color inside the US borders and outside the US borders.”

Van Jones (1968) American environmental advocate and civil rights activist

Wartimes : Reports From The Opposition (2003) a CD financed, produced and featuring the voice of Jones, as quoted at "Cool... But, Yes, Communist" by Marty Peretz, in The New Republic (10 September 2009) http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-spine/cool-yes-communist

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
John Dickinson photo

“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

The Liberty Song (1768).

Stuart Davis photo
Ingvar Kamprad photo
Steve Allen photo
Antonio Negri photo
Fred P. Cone photo
Walt Disney photo

“We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

As quoted in How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life by Pat Williams, Jim Denney

W.E.B. Du Bois photo