Quotes about divider
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“And even as we meet conventional threats, we need to face other challenges. And that includes propaganda campaigns that try to whip up fears and divide people from one another. We reject the idea that people cannot live and thrive together, just because they have different backgrounds or speak a different language. And the best antidotes to such distorted thinking are the values that define us. Not just in the Baltics, but throughout Europe, we must acknowledge the inherent dignity and human rights of every person -- because our democracies cannot truly succeed until we root out bias and prejudice, both from our institutions and from our hearts. We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech -- because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth. We have to embrace open and inclusive societies -- because our countries are more successful and more prosperous when we welcome the talents of all our people, including minorities. That’s part of the work that we must do. That's the example we must set.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Truth, Fear, Democracy

“My material on Samoa was gathered during a nine-month field trip in 1925–26 as a Fellow in the Biological Sciences of the National Research Council, on a research project designated as the study of the adolescent girl.
The Samoan Islands, with a population in 1926 of 40,229, are peopled by a Polynesian group, a people with light brown skin and wavy black hair who speak a Polynesian language. The islands were Christianized in the first half of the nineteenth century and were administratively divided between a League of Nations Mandate under New Zealand called Western Samoa, which comprised the islands of Upolu and Savaii, and American Samoa, which was governed by the United States Navy.
All my detailed work was done in the remote islands of the Manua group, principally in the village of Tau on the island of Tau.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1960s, Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), p. 338

People, Girl, Study, Light

“Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“Swamy Shraddananda’, written by Rabindranath in Magh, 1333 Bangabda; compiled in the book ‘Kalantar’.

God, Friendship, Age, Religion

“As a people we must be united. If we are not united we shall slip into the gulf of measureless disaster. We must be strong in purpose for our own defense and bent on securing justice within our borders. If as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed or of those of one race against those of another race, surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: Even in the matter of national defense there is such a labyrinth of committees and counsels and advisors that there is a tendency on the part of the average citizen to become confused and do nothing. I ask you to help strike the note that shall unite our people. As a people we must be united. If we are not united we shall slip into the gulf of measureless disaster. We must be strong in purpose for our own defense and bent on securing justice within our borders. If as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed or of those of one race against those of another race, surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow. I ask you here tonight and those like you to take a foremost part in the movement a young men's movement for a greater and better America in the future.

War, People, Justice, Strong

“If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free government without elections”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, On Democratic Government (1864)
Context: If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free government without elections; and if the election could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we will have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

War, People

“The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

The Allowable Rhyme (1915)
Non-Fiction
Context: The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.

“I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Salon interview (1997)
Context: I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. Because in actual fact, men and women have much more in common than they are separated.

People, Way

“If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Letter to the American Defense Society (1919)
Context: In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.

Men, Hostility, War, People

“It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.
The same is true of what we write: it walks and it talks, but it can be dead-alive or alive-alive. What is truly alive stops before nothing and ceaselessly seeks answers to absurd, "childish" questions. Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken — errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs. And if answers be impossible of attainment, all the better! Dealing with answered questions is the privilege of brains constructed like a cow's stomach, which, as we know, is built to digest cud.

People, Error, Dead

“There is no example of a country that is successful if its people are divided based on religion or ethnicity.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)
Context: There is no example of a country that is successful if its people are divided based on religion or ethnicity. If you look at the Middle East right now and the chaos that’s taking place in a place like Syria, so much of that is based on religious differences. Even though they’re all Muslim, Shia and Sunni are fighting each other. If you look in Northern Ireland, then Catholics and Protestants fought for decades and only now have arrived at peace. So in this globalized world where people of different faiths and cultures and races are going to meet each other inevitably -- because nobody just lives in a village anymore; people are constantly getting information from different places and new ideas and meeting people who are different from them –- it is critical for any country to abide by the basic principle that all people are equal, all people are deserving of respect, all people are equal under the law, all people can participate in the life of their country, all people should be able to express their views without fear of being repressed. And those attitudes start with each of us individually. It’s important that government play a role in making sure that it applies laws fairly, not arbitrarily, not on the basis of preferring one group over another.

People, Religion, Success, Country

“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.”

Aristotle book Politics

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.

Children, Knowledge

“The progressive world is necessarily divided into two classes — those who take the best of what there is and enjoy it — those who wish for something better and try to create it.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)
Context: The progressive world is necessarily divided into two classes — those who take the best of what there is and enjoy it — those who wish for something better and try to create it. Without these two classes the world would be badly off. They are the very conditions of progress, both the one and the other. Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

World

“I’m here to say we must reject such despair. I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds. I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life, what I’ve seen of this country and its people -- their goodness and decency --as President of the United States. […] I see what's possible when we recognize that we are one American family, all deserving of equal treatment, all deserving of equal respect, all children of God. That’s the America that I know.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)
Context: Faced with this violence, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged. We wonder if an African-American community that feels unfairly targeted by police, and police departments that feel unfairly maligned for doing their jobs, can ever understand each other’s experience. We turn on the TV or surf the Internet, and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn, and people retreat to their respective corners, and politicians calculate how to grab attention or avoid the fallout. We see all this, and it’s hard not to think sometimes that the center won't hold and that things might get worse. I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair. I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds. I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life, what I’ve seen of this country and its people -- their goodness and decency --as President of the United States. [... ] I see what's possible when we recognize that we are one American family, all deserving of equal treatment, all deserving of equal respect, all children of God. That’s the America that I know.

Life, God, Children, People

“The peace we seek in the world begins in human hearts. And it finds its glorious expression when we look beyond any differences in religion or tribe, and rejoice in the beauty of every soul. […] Do we act with compassion and empathy. […] we have to guard against any efforts to divide ourselves along sectarian lines or any other lines.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Address to the People of India (January 2015)
Context: The peace we seek in the world begins in human hearts. And it finds its glorious expression when we look beyond any differences in religion or tribe, and rejoice in the beauty of every soul. [... ] Do we act with compassion and empathy. [... ] we have to guard against any efforts to divide ourselves along sectarian lines or any other lines.

World, Peace, Religion, Beauty

“Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity. That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A World that Stands as One (July 2008)
Context: Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity. That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

Way, Partnership

“The world is divided into those who understand me and those who don’t.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

In the case of the latter, I simply leave them to torment themselves trying to gain my sympathy.
Aleph (2011)

World, Understanding

“The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Twenty Year Vision for America (2004)
Context: As with science and technology, there could be a dark side of globalization, in which progress for some means poverty for others, as jobs and opportunities ebb and flow, securities and currencies fluctuate in value, and the tension between private profit and public good persists. But surely these are risks that we can manage in a world with an America more attuned to its larger purpose and responsibilities.
The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.
Our goal for the next twenty years should be to finally recognize that our differences are our greatest strength. That's true not only here in America, but in all parts of the world, where we've allowed historic rifts to poison the well of opportunity. They've arisen from the natural prides and passion of humanity. Only when we recognize that — when we respect the human spirit — will we be a great nation and a great world. These are the steps we must take in the next twenty years, as we reach out for the newest frontiers.

People, World, Color, Imagination

“All Gaul is divided into three parts”
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

Julius Caesar book Commentarii de Bello Gallico

Book I, Ch. 1 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/caesar/gall1.shtml; these are the first words of De Bello Gallico, the whole sentence is "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third." http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0448.phi001.perseus-lat1:1.1.1 De Bello Gallico

Parting

“There are any number of reasons America emerged from its humble beginnings as a cluster of colonies to become the most prosperous, most powerful nation on earth. There is the hard work, the resilience, and the character of our people. There is the ingenuity and enterprising spirit of our entrepreneurs and innovators. There are the ideals of opportunity, equality, and freedom that have not only inspired our people to perfect our own union, but inspired others to perfect theirs as well. But from the very start, there was also something more. A steadfast commitment to serve, to fight, and if necessary, to die, to preserve America and advance the ideals we cherish. It’s a commitment witnessed at each defining moment along the journey of this country. It’s what led a rag-tag militia to face British soldiers at Lexington and Concord. It’s what led young men, in a country divided half slave and half free, to take up arms to save our union. It’s what led patriots in each generation to sacrifice their own lives to secure the life of our nation, from the trenches of World War I to the battles of World War II, from Inchon and Khe Sanh, from Mosul to Marja.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2010, Weekly Address (May 29, 2010)

Life, Men, War, People

“I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here — they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)

World, Strong, Evil, Help

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
In this famous statement, Lincoln is quoting the response of Jesus Christ to those who accused him of being able to cast out devils because he was empowered by the Prince of devils, recorded in Matthew 12:25: "And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand".
1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Housing

“In the end, Indira Gandhi has earned her name as a great martyr on the doorsteps of history. With her courage and efficiency, she demonstrated that only she understood the realities of our corrupt and divided society and was capable of uniting the country dominated by rotten politics. She was a great woman and in her valiant death, she has become greater.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Nanaji Deshmukh, Quoted in Friends Of Saffron https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/friends-of-saffron/205424 Outlook Magazine, 27 April 1998

Death, History, Courage, Reality

“Look, I don’t see the world as something divided between right and left. And I don’t at all care who’s on the right or left or in the center. Even though we use them, even though I use them myself, these expressions have lost all meaning. I’m not interested in one label or the other—I’m only interested in solving certain problems, in getting where I want to go. I have certain objectives.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Indira Gandhi in New Delhi, February 1972

World, Problem

“When we divide, we cannot win. We must find common ground as the basis for survival and development and change, and growth.”

Jesse Jackson (1941) African-American civil rights activist and politician

Address to the Democratic National Convention (July 19, 1988)

Change

“Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out!”

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

Reputedly from the original minutes of the Philadelphia committee of citizens sent to meet with President Jackson (February 1834), according to Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels as published by his son Stan V. Henkels Jr. - online PDF http://kenhirsch.net/money/AndrewJacksonAndTheBankHenkels.pdf. John Carney at Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/sorry-andrew-jackson-probably-never-said-that-den-of-theives-quote-2010-1 has disputed its authenticity alleging Henkels made unreliable claims about historical documents. A different version of this quote is provided by Henkels in a 1912 copy of Publisher's Weekly https://books.google.com/books?id=IyYzAQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (p. 2039). Disputed

Men, Family, Time, Country

“The strength of Soviet patriotism lies in the fact that it is based not on racial or nationalistic prejudices, but on the peoples’ profound loyalty and devotion to their Soviet Motherland, on the fraternal partnership of the working people of all the nationalities in our country. Soviet patriotism harmoniously combines the national traditions of the peoples and the common vital interests of all the working people of the Soviet Union. Far from dividing them, Soviet patriotism welds all the nations and peoples of our country into a single fraternal family. This should be regarded as the basis of the inviolable friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union which is growing ever stronger. At the same time the peoples of the U.S.S.R. respect the rights and independence of the peoples of foreign countries and have always shown themselves willing to live in peace and friendship with neighbouring states.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech at Celebration Meeting of the Moscow Soviet of Working People’s Deputies and Moscow Party and Public Organizations https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1944/11/06.htm (6 November 1944) Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Friendship, People, Family, Peace

“Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture (1996), p. 62

Problem, Water, Animals, Dependency

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Disputed

Women, Men, Relation ships, Sea

“If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Disputed

Men, Relation ships, Sea

“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Joy, Relationship, Romantic, Wedding

“Gentleman, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the bread-stuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to route you out!”

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

Source: 1832. See The Minds of Men: An American Intelligence Brief https://books.google.com.br/books?id=u2I6AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA27 by Eric Sanders. AuthorHouse, 2014. pp. 27-28

Men, Family, Time, Country

“Race Disconnects
Religion Separates
Politics Divides
and Wealth Classifies.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Religion, Wealth

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

World

“But allow Riley to boss him around? Multiply "hell, no" by "dream on" and divide by "suck it," and the answer was "the wolf could bite the big one.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Unraveled

Dreams, Hell, Wolf

“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

People

“it was possible to grow up in an instant, that you could look down and see the line in the sand dividing your life now from what it used to be.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Life

“I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures, those who make it or those who don't. I divide the world into learners and nonlearners.”

Benjamin R. Barber (1939–2017) US political scientist

Source: The Reader's digest vol. 140, no. 837-842 (1992), p. 159

World, Failure, Strong, Success

“Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don't.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

People, Thinking

“Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.”

David Levithan book Wide Awake

Source: Wide Awake

People, World, Thinking

“It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Intelligence, Understanding, Light

“The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will.”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon

Thinking, Science, Parting

“All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience –
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: The area dividing the brain and the soul
Is affected in many ways by experience --
Some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
Some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
Some lose both and become:
accepted.
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Way, Soul

“Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith, and we
Divide.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

“My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Dreams, Sleep, Time

“A mathematical formula for happiness:Reality divided by Expectations. There were two ways to be happy:improve your reality or lower your expectations.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Way, Mathematics, Reality

“The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, World

“In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Faith, Time, Country

“I love you. It was the tie that bound, even across the divides of death and time.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: The King

Love, Death, Time

“Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Happiness, Hope, Reality

“As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

People, Color

“There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Water, Time, Past, Future

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 10, p. 110
Source: What Is the What

Pain, Youth, Shoe, Boy

“My chest of books divide amongst my friends.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Keats' last poem which doubled as his last will and testament

Books

“For always in her there was a dark place full of despair and a great dividing force to make meaning because there was none.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Despair

“Happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Happiness

“The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Love, Sex, Sense

“… Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.”

Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Chicago: City on the Make

Love, Heart

“It was strange, I reflected, as we went out into the golden evening of the Byzantine streets, that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one’s life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 37

Life, Home, Joy

“JOY goes against the foundations of mathematics: it multiplies when we divide.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Mathematics, Joy

“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Youth, Future

“Time wasn't a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Time, Past

“Because the world isn’t divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the potential to be extraordinary. As long as you have a soul and free will, you can be anything, do anything, choose anything”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Variant: Because the world isn’t divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the potential to be extraordinary. As long as you have a soul and free will, you can be anything, do anything, choose anything.
Source: City of Heavenly Fire

World, Soul

“I lost track of day and night too. My time was divided into Dimitri and not-Dimitri. He was my world. When he wasn't there, the moments were agony.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

World, Time, Night

“Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: Little White Horse

People, Food, Literature, Personality

“Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. I, lines 159–172.
Source: Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Context: A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high
He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide:
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please;
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave, what with his toil he won
To that unfeather'd, two-legg'd thing, a son:
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try;
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.

Madness

“Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.”

Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil

Source: Beatrice and Virgil

Truth

“How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.”

Elspeth Huxley (1907–1997) Kenyan writer

Source: The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

Imagination, Light, Water

“It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better… while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Variant: There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.

People, World

“Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

Love

“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness…”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Happiness, World, Hope, Light

“For no one, in our long decline,
So dusty, spiteful and divided,
Had quite such pleasant friends as mine,
Or loved them half as much as I did.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Love

“The world is divided by two different tribes. The people who are assholes and the people who are not.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

People, World

“I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

People, Way, Feeling, Joy

“Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The Mustard magazine interview" (January 2005)
Context: Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.

Life, Science

“You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Death

“She struggled with her sadness, but tried to conceal it, to divide it into smaller and smaller parts and scatter these in places she thought no one would find them.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Sadness, Parting

“I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.”

Aleister Crowley book The Book of the Law

I:29.
Source: The Book of the Law (1904)

Love, Chance

“I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.”

William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) American author, critic and scholar

Reading, Forgetting

“With a cheery delicacy she divided my obsessions into three categories: acceptable, unacceptable, and hilarious.”

Steve Martin book The Pleasure of My Company

Source: The Pleasure of My Company

“Worry divides the mind.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear

“Because the world isn't divided into the special and the ordinary. Everyone has the potential to be extra ordinary.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

World

“People who truly love us can be divided into two categories: those who understand us, and those who forgive us our worst sins. Rarely do you find someone capable of both.”

Jonathan Carroll (1949) novelist, short story writer

Love, People, Forgiveness, Understanding

“Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief”

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

Friendship, Happiness, Joy, Happy

“With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“There are two kinds of people in this world. The kind who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

People, World

“Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Feeling

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

Source: Adonais

Life, Death

“What is the spiritual battle? Well, the soul is a garden divided into two parts. On one half are planted thorny bushes, and on the other half flowers. We also have a water pump with two taps and two channels. The one guides the water to the thorns and the other to the flowers. I always have the choice to open one or the other tap. I leave the thorns without water and they dry up, I water the flowers and they blossom.”

Porphyrios Bairaktaris (1906–1991) Greek Saint

Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit - The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece, p. 170

Soul, Flowers, Water, Parting

“Various inscriptions refer to the Mbh (Mahabharata) as the composition of Vyasa, the Veda divider, the son of Parasara, and as containing 100,000 verses…”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 3.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

“In most of the old colonial world, the struggle for independence is coming to an end. Even in areas behind the Curtain, that which Jefferson called "the disease of liberty" still appears to be infectious. With the passing of ancient empires, today less than 2 percent of the world's population lives in territories officially termed "dependent." As this effort for independence, inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort — for interdependence — is transforming the world about us. And the spirit of that new effort is the same spirit which gave birth to the American Constitution. That spirit is today most clearly seen across the Atlantic Ocean. The nations of Western Europe, long divided by feuds far more bitter than any which existed among the 13 colonies, are today joining together, seeking, as our forefathers sought, to find freedom in diversity and in unity, strength.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Address at Independence Hall

World, Disease, Birth, Effort

“The Leader of the Future 2 is divided into five parts. In Part One, our book begins where it should, with Peter Drucker’s vision of leadership… Part Two, "Leading in a Diverse World," begins with the recognized world authority on building a learning organization. "Systems Citizenship" presents MIT’s Peter Senge at his best, as he challenges us to understand systems, implement systems intelligence, and build partnerships that are a mandate for the new millennium… Part Three, "Leading in a Time of Crisis and Complexity," begins with Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Ron describes new approaches to solving leadership dilemmas as he challenges leaders in "Anchoring Leadership in the Work of Adaptive Progress"… Part Four, "Leading Organizations of the Future," shows how changing context has an impact leadership needs, demanding changes in leadership styles. Charles Handy is one of the great social philosophers of our time… Part Five, "The Quality and Character of the Leader of the Future," begins with one of the most influential thought leaders in history, Stephen Covey. In "Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age."”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: The leader of the future 2, 2006, p. xiv-xvii; preview

Books, Age, World, School

“The powers inherent in man are his intelligence and his physical capacity for work. Those which arise from the condition of society consist of the capacity to divide up labour and to distribute different jobs amongst different People … and the power to exchange mutual services and the products which constitute these means. The motive which impels a man to give his services to another is self -interest- he requires a reward for the services rendered. The right of exclusive private property is indispensable to the establishment of exchange amongst men… Exchange and division of labour reciprocally condition each other.”

Fryderyk Skarbek (1792–1866) Polish noble

Fryderyk Skarbek (1828), cited in: Karl Marx. Human Requirements and Division of Labour https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm, Manuscript, 1844.

Men, People, Intelligence, Motivation

“The government of the United States represents, as its army also does, the finances of the United States. But these finances do not represent the North American people; they represent a small group of financiers, the owners of all the big enterprises… who also exploit the North American people. Clearly they do not exploit them in the same manner that they exploit us, the human beings of inferior races… for we have not had the good fortune of being born from blond, Anglo-Saxon parents. But they do exploit and divide them, they too are divided into blacks and whites, and they too are divided into men and women, union and non-union, employed and unemployed.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1968), by George Lavan, p. 17

Women, Men, People, Parent

“A very bold political measure of Lycurgus is his redistribution of the land. For there was a dreadful inequality in this regard, the city was heavily burdened with indigent and helpless people, and wealth was wholly concentrated in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth, he persuaded his fellow-citizens to make one parcel of all their territory and divide it up anew, and to live with one another on a basis of entire uniformity and equality in the means of subsistence, seeking preëminence through virtue alone, assured that there was no other difference or inequality between man and man than that which was established by blame for base actions and praise for good ones.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Lycurgus, sec. 8. The bolded phrase is often quoted in a paraphrase by Ugo Foscolo: "Wealth and poverty are the oldest and most deadly ailments of all republics" (Le ricchezze e la povertà sono le più antiche e mortali infermità delle repubbliche), Monitore Italiano, 5 February 1798.
Parallel Lives

People, Disease, Affliction, Envy