Quotes about division
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Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo
Jan Smuts photo
C. L. R. James photo
Thomas Müntzer photo

“Freely and boldly I declare that I have never heard a single donkey-cunt doctor of theology, in the smallest of his divisions and points, even whisper, to say nothing of speaking loudly, and points, even whisper, to say nothing of speaking loudly, about the order (established in God and all his creatures).”

Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525) early Reformation-era German pastor who was a rebel leader during the German Peasants' War

"A Protest about the Condition of the Bohemians"
Wu Ming Presents Thomas Müntzer, Sermon to the Princes

“Formal theories of organization have been taught in management courses for many years, and there is an extensive literature on the subject. The textbook principles of organization — hierarchical structure, authority, unity of command, task specialization, division of staff and line, span of control, equality of responsibility and authority, etc.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

comprise a logically persuasive set of assumptions which have had a profound influence upon managerial behavior.
Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 15 (p. 21 in 2006 edition)

Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Daniel McCallum photo
Guy Kawasaki photo

“How many Macintosh division employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

Guy Kawasaki (1954) American businessman and author

The answer is one. The Macintosh division employee holds up the light bulb and expects the universe to revolve around it.
Speech at Stanford University 2 March 2011 http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2669

Thomas Young (scientist) photo
Thomas Young (scientist) photo

“Besides these improvements,… there are others,… which may… be interesting to those… engaged in those departments… Among these may be ranked, in the division of mechanics, properly so called, a simple demonstration of the law of the force by which a body revolves in an ellipsis; another of the properties of cycloidal pendulums; an examination of the mechanism of animal motions; a comparison of the measures and weights of different countries; and a convenient estimate of the effect of human labour: with respect to architecture, a simple method of drawing the outline of a column: an investigation of the best forms for arches; a determination of the curve which affords the greatest space for turning; considerations on the structure of the joints employed in carpentry, and on the firmness of wedges; and an easy mode of forming a kirb roof: for the purposes of machinery of different kinds, an arrangement of bars for obtaining rectilinear motion; an inquiry into the most eligible proportions of wheels and pinions; remarks on the friction of wheel work, and of balances; a mode of finding the form of a tooth for impelling a pallet without friction; a chronometer for measuring minute portions of time; a clock escapement; a calculation of the effect of temperature on steel springs; an easy determination of the best line of draught for a carriage; an investigation of the resistance to be overcome by a wheel or roller; and an estimation of the ultimate pressure produced by a blow.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

Louis Riel photo

“As to religion what is my belief? What is my insanity about that? My insanity, Your Honors, Gentlemen of the Jury, is that I wish to leave Rome aside inasmuch as it is the cause of division between the Catholics and Protestants. I did not wish to force my views because, in Batoche, to the Half-breeds that followed me I used the word Carte blanche.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

If I have any influence in the New World it is to help in that way and even if it takes two hundred years to become practical, then after my death that will bring out practical results, and then my children will shake hands with the Protestants of the New World in a friendly manner. I do not wish those evils which exist in Europe to be continued as much as I can influence it, among the Half-breeds. I do not wish that to be repeated in America, that work is not the work of some days or some years it is the work of hundreds of years.
Address to Grand Jury (1885)

Paul Scholes photo

“I just love Paul Scholes. He’s been the best footballer in our division for the last ten years. He’s a a wonderful player. If they get hold of him and stop him from playing I think Chelsea will beat them.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.talksport.co.uk/sports-news/football/premier-league/6395/0/exclusive-%E2%80%93-wilkins-%E2%80%98chelsea-will-beat-united-if-they-stop-scholes%E2%80%99
Ray Wilkins

“What greater challenge today.... to disorder and insensitivity; what greater propaganda for integration than this emotionally intense, dramatic division of space?”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

quote in 1943, discussing the art of Piet Mondrian
Quote of Ad Reinhardt in: Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. ?
1940 - 1955

John Stuart Mill photo

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

Richard Dawkins photo

“Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia.
What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

No other cells enjoy this exalted status.
But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could ... fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case ... who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.
We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.
A successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee. Even if the hybrid were infertile like a mule, the shock waves that would be sent through society would be salutary. This is why a distinguished biologist described this possibility as the most immoral scientific experiment he could imagine: it would change everything! It cannot be ruled out as impossible, but it would be surprising.
Richard Dawkins Chimpanzee Hybrid? The Guardian, Jan 2009 https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jan/02/richard-dawkins-chimpanzee-hybrid?commentpage=2

Rudyard Kipling photo

“There are only two divisions in the world to-day — human beings and Germans. And the German knows it. Human beings have long ago sickened of him and everything connected with him,of all he does, says, thinks and believes.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Speech at Southport, June 22, 1915. Quoted in The New York Times Current History, Volume 2; Volume 4. New York Times Company, 1917. Also quoted in Paul Piazza, Christopher Isherwood: Myth and Anti-Myth. Columbia Univesity Press, 2010 (p.217).

“It is only in the cracks of division that corruption can seep in and pollution can spew out.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/20/youth_climate_lawsuit_juliana_v_united#transcript https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/20/youth_climate_lawsuit_juliana_v_united#transcript DemocracyNow (20 September 2019)

C. L. R. James photo
Karl Pearson photo
Samuel P. Huntington photo

“When an American thinks about the problem of government-building, he directs himself not to be creation of authority and the accumulation of power but rather to the limitation of authority and the division of power.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Political Order in Changing Societies https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/gov2126/files/huntington_political_order_changing_soc.pdf (1968), p. 7

Dorothy Thompson photo

“The rise of liberalism was accompanied by immense technological progress; by the industrial revolution; by the division of labor which ensued, and which suddenly, and prodigiously, accelerated the efficiency of production; and by the conception of economic life governed by the market. In other words, of economic life governed by the buyer, not the seller. This was a brand-new and wholly revolutionary idea.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 65-66

Erving Goffman photo
Annie Besant photo
Annie Besant photo

“There is a Path which leads to that which is known as Initiation, and through Initiation to the Perfecting of Man; a Path which is recognized in all the great religions, and the chief features of which are described in similar terms in every one of the great faiths of the world. You may read of it in the Roman Catholic teachings as divided into three parts: (1) The Path of Purification or Purgation; (2) the Path of Illumination; and (3) the Path of Union with Divinity. You find it among the Mussulmans in the Sufi — the mystic — teachings of Islam, where it is known under the names of the Way, the Truth and the Life. You find it further eastward still in the great faith of Buddhism, divided into subdivisions, though these can be classified under the broader outline. It is similarly divided in Hinduism; for in both those great religions, in which the study of psychology, of the human mind and the human constitution, has played so great a part, you find a more definite subdivision. But really it matters not to which faith you turn; it matters not which particular set of names you choose as best attracting or expressing your own ideas; the Path is but one; its divisions are always the same; from time immemorial that Path has stretched from the life of the world to the life of the Divine.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man (1923)

Joe Biden photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“Being an optimist, I am still hopeful that it may end in the division of Spain geographically into two states. But, above all, I want the war to come to an end and not to extend.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Letter to Kingsley Martin on the Spanish Civil War (9 August 1937), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931–45 (1968), p. 257
1930s

Tertullian photo

“Now if He too is God, according to John, (who says.) "The Word was God," then you have two, One that commands that the thing be made. and the Other that makes. In what sense, however, you ought to understand Him to be another I have already explained, on the ground of Personality, not of Substance, in the way of distinction, not of division.”

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

Adv. Prax. 12 http://www.intratext.com/IXT/LAT0788/_P1.HTM
Original: (la) Qui si ipse deus est secundum Ioannem - Deus erat sermo - habes duos, alium dicentem ut fiat, alium facientem. Alium autem quomodo accipere debeas iam professus sum, personae non substantiae nomine, ad distinctionem non ad divisionem.

Bernice King photo

“Our country has experienced many divisive dark days, but God’s hand has guided us through it all.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Plea to congress open letter

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
José Hermano Saraiva photo

“He who fights for unity, for me is great. He who fights for division, for me... (shakes his head disapprovingly)”

José Hermano Saraiva (1919–2012) Historian, Jurist, Politician

"A Alma e a Gente - D. Maria II, A Rainha da Regeneração"
Original: (pt) Quem luta pela unidade para mim é grande. Quem se bate pela divisão para mim...
Original: (pt) abana a cabeça reprovadoramente

José Manuel Imbamba photo

“It's a cultural mentality that is causing divisions, hatred and the consolidation of ignorance. Families are being destroyed, and it's getting worse because children themselves are being accused of being witches.”

José Manuel Imbamba (1965) Angolan Roman Catholic archbishop and university teacher

Pope in Angola: Fight superstition https://www.scross.co.za/2009/03/pope-in-angola-fight-superstition/ (21 March 2009)

Laurence Tribe photo

“[A] Bill of Rights directed against federal abuses was thought necessary in addition to the separation and division of powers...”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Source: American Constitutional Law (1978), Approaches to Constituitonal Analysis

Anthony Albanese photo

“I want to unite the country. I think people have had enough of division, what they want is to come together as a nation and I intend to lead that.”

Anthony Albanese (1963) 31st Prime Minister of Australia

Anthony Albanese (2022) cited in: " Anthony Albanese: Who is Australia’s prime minister-elect? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/21/anthony-albanese-who-is-australias-prime-minister-elect" in Aljazeera, 21 May 2022.

Jody Hice photo

“Things like freedom and liberty and constitutional protection and unalienable rights that are beyond the scope of government. Those type of things are the only things that will help us deal with some of the division in our country.”

Jody Hice (1960) Georgia Republican Congressman

Congressman Jody Hice: Religious Liberty and Good Business are Benefits of Republican Majority https://merionwest.com/2018/03/29/congressman-jody-hice-religious-liberty-and-good-business-are-benefits-of-republican-majority/ (29 March 2018)

T.S. Eliot photo

“The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings.”

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

"Revelation" (1937), in The Idea of a Christian Society and Other Writings (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), p. 168