Quotes about separation
page 4

“Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names?”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Time

“The dead are never far from us. They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Heart, Dead

“You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People

“Separately they had different strengths. Together they were complete.”

Lisa Kleypas book Dreaming of You

Source: Dreaming of You

“No matter what happens, you will always be Pack. Because you have that loyalty and restraint. Not human, not whatever, but Kate. Unique and different, but not separate.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

Loyalty

“If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Sea, Powerful

“We're all born lost, aren't we? We're all born separated from God - over and over life makes sure to inform us of this - and yet we're all real: we have names, we have lives. We mean something. We must.”

Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus!

Source: Hey Nostradamus!

Life, God

“Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart - the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings

Way, Feeling, Question, Waiting

“But the Silent Brothers have tried everything to separate Jace from the heavenly fire, and they can't do it. It's in his soul. So what's their plan, hitting Sebastian over the head with Jace until he passes out?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

"Brother Zachariah said pretty much the same thing. Maybe with less sarcasm."
Clary Fray and Jace Herondale, pg. 100-101
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

Soul

“Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

In reference to the Alabama Council on Human Relations, an organization which was joined by King, whose church's meeting room was used to hold monthly meetings for the Montgomery chapter the council. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)
1950s
Context: Although the Montgomery council never had a large membership, it played an important role. As the only truly interracial group in Montgomery, it served to keep the desperately needed channels of communication open between the races.
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated. In providing an avenue of communication, the council was fulfilling a necessary condition for better race relations in the South.

Men, Hate, Fear, Communication

“Someday you're going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Source: A New Hope

Learning

“To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

“There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one's self, the very meaning of one's soul.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Life, Soul, Personality, Friendship

“Mirrors and images. Or sex and love. These are two separate systems that we miserably try to link.”

Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis

Source: Cosmopolis

Love, Sex

“We have woven a web, you and I, attached to this world but a separate world of our own invention.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

World

“The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Coffee, Night

“I’m living in separate universes, and I have no idea where I actually belong.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Idea, Universe

“There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–1992) English author

Thinking, Change, Parting

“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

“And in the case of superior things like stars, we discover a kind of unity in separation. The higher we rise on the scale of being, the easier it is to discern a connection even among things separated by vast distances.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Star

“Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals… except the weasel.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Learning, Animals

“The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Appearance, Personality

“Never separate the life you lead from the words you speak.”

Paul Wellstone (1944–2002) American politician

Life

“Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Soul

“She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Sadness, Sad

“Only love heals. Anger, guilt, and fear can only destroy and separate you from your true capabilities.”

Alyson Nöel book Evermore

Source: Evermore

Love, Fear, Anger

“We're already separated that's official but there's still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday we could give things another try.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Hope

“But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Help

“Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Star

“You promised, Seaweed brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Variant: You promised, Seaweed Brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!”

“You’re impossible!”

“Love you too!
Source: The House of Hades

“It is not only by one's impulses that one achieves greatness, but also by patiently filing away the steel wall that separates what one feels from what one is capable of doing.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Feeling

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

People, Health, Books, World

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

People, Personality

“Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time.”

Mario Puzo book Fools Die

Source: Fools Die

Death, War, Time, Madness

“It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy Pride.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Confidence

“Laughter separates us from despair and gives us a chance at love.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

During a dinner discussion with Kristen Bell and Jean Reno. Filmed for a week of shows in Paris, France.
2011-08-05 broadcast
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

Love, Laughter, Chance, Despair

“That's just your ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge. This is what ego does. It keeps you feeling separate, keeps you with a sense of duality, tries to convince you that you're flawed and broken and alone instead of whole.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Feeling, Sense

“If there were a map of the solar system, but instead of stars it showed people and their degrees of separation, my star would be the one you had to travel the most light-years from to get to his. You would die getting to him.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

People, Travel, Star, Light

“Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.”

Elie Wiesel book Day

Source: Day

Suffering

“Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

W.S. Merwin (1927–2019) American poet

Color, Sad

“The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Love, World

“A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.”

Dean Koontz book Velocity

Source: Velocity

Fear

“That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness - that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy.”

Wally Lamb book She's Come Undone

Source: She's Come Undone

Happiness, People, Sadness, Idea

“Christ is sufficient. We do not need "support groups" for each and every separate tribulation. The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the same old rugged cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: These Strange Ashes

Peace, Support, Joy, Christ

“My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separate what seems real from what seems fantastic.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Problem

“Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal.”

Michel Houellebecq book Atomised

Source: Atomised

Evil

“This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

People, Thinking, Heart, Personality

“Blindness separates people from things;
deafness separates people from people.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

People

“What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990), p. 3; https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/550046337547665409

Fate, Personality, Courageous

“But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

World, Sense

“When she didn't say anything more, he frowned, thinking this was the pair of them in a nutshell: Standing three feet away from each other and being separated by miles.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Thinking

“Fear separates--makes us feel alone--disconnected--while love--love does just the opposite--it unites. {shadowland}”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Love, Fear, Feeling

“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Widely attributed to Shaw begin31 (187ning in the 1940s, esp. after appearing in the November 1942 Reader’s Digest, the quotation is actually a variant of "Indeed, in many respects, she [Mrs. Otis] was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language" from Oscar Wilde's 1887 short story "The Canterville Ghost".
Misattributed
Variant: The English and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language.

Country

“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once, and they require separate techniques.”

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 3: The Challenge of the Mandarins (p. 19)

Art, Literature, Reading

“People are always separable.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

People

“The only thing that separates us from the animals… is we have pornography.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Animals

“What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading..”

Edward R. Tufte Envisioning Information

Source: Envisioning Information

Question, Reading

“Childhood romances always seem so real, so enduring, when we are separated from the object of our affection. But usually, when we return, we find that our dreams and memories quiet surpassed reality.

-Lady Anne, Whitney's aunt”

Judith McNaught book Whitney, My Love

Source: Whitney, My Love

Dreams, Reality, Memory, Childhood

“Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Freedom

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Pain, Laughter, Hurt, Heartbreaking

“You have begun to separate the dark from the dark.”

Philip Levine (1928–2015) Poet

“the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate…”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“The dance goes from realizing that you're separate (which is the awakening) to then trying to find your way back into the totality of which you are not only a part, but which you are.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Way, Dance, Parting

“To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter everyday. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

“It was as if the normal veil that separated two people had melted.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 2

People

“But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future´s sakes.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"Two Tramps in Mud Time" (1936), st. 9
General sources

Love, Future

“I'm completely in favor of the
separation of Church and State.
… These two institutions screw us up enough
on their own, so both of them together is
certain death.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Death

“So I’m your first ever Shadowhunter, huh?" Alec said when they separated at last.
"You’re my first so many things, Alec Lightwood," Magnus said.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Variant: So I’m your first ever Shadowhunter, huh?" Alec said when they separated at last.
"You’re my first so many things, Alec Lightwood
Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure, World, Peace, Law

“Ever since I embraced Sufism, I have learnt to separate myself from my desires and my success. Now, I can distance myself from all the adulation showered on me.”

A. R. Rahman (1966) Indian singer and composer

A R Rahman: In tune with life

Success

“One reason nearly half my books are for children is the glorious fact that the minds of children are still open to the living word; in the child, nightside and sunside are not yet separated; fantasy contains truths which cannot be stated in terms of proof.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)

Children, Truth, Books

“Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“By 1954, when Brown came up for decision, it had been apparent for some time that segregation rarely if ever produced equality. Quite aside from any question of psychology, the physical facilities provided for blacks were not as good as those provided for whites. That had been demonstrated in a long series of cases... The Court's realistic choice, therefore, was either to abandon the quest for equality by allowing segregation or to forbid segregation in order to achieve equality. There was no third choice. Either choice would violate one aspect of the original understanding, but there was no possibility of avoiding that. Since equality and segregation were mutually inconsistent, though the ratifiers did not understand that, both could not be honored. When that is seen, it is obvious the Court must choose equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.”

Robert Bork (1927–2012) American legal scholar

The Tempting of America (1990), page 82; on Brown v. Board of Education.

Law, Understanding, Question, Decision

“The truth “I exist” is self-evident. You may deny God by saying, “God is just a belief,” but existence cannot be refuted. That existence, that Cosmic Power, is God. God has no separate hands, legs, eyes, or body, other than our own. He moves through our hands, He walks with our legs, He sees through our eyes, and it is He who beats within the heart of each one of us.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Unity is Peace (1995)

God, Truth, Heart

“They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVII.

Peace, Religion, Country

“I think that what we need is to create policies which deal with immigration in a rational way. And a rational way is not locking children up in detention centers or separating them from their mothers. What we need is Trump to sit down with members of Congress and work on a rational program which deals with this serious issue.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Answering to Jake Tapper on if he is in favor of abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. [Mirkinson, Jack, Not Good Enough, Bernie Sanders, https://splinternews.com/not-good-enough-bernie-sanders-1827099565, 27 June 2018, Splinter News, 26 June 2018]
2010s, 2018

Children, Way, Thinking

“Aspects of visual perception—motion, depth, form, and color—are segregated from one another and conveyed in separate pathways in the brain, where they are brought together and coordinated into a unified perception.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

Color

“It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 236)
Earth (1990)

School, Problem, Sense, Appearance

“When I behold the scientific and so-called philosophers full of selfish feelings, and of a tenency to war against circumstances and Providence, I say to myself: They are not true priests, they are but half prophets — it not absolutely false ones. They have read the great page simply with the physical eye, and with none of the spirit within. The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole… That God is one, and that all the works and the feelings He has called into existence are ONE; this is a truth (a biblical and scriptural truth too) not in my opinion developed to the apprehension of most people in its really deep and unfanthomable meaning. There is too much tendency to making separate and independent bundles of both the physical and the moral facts of the universe. Whereas, all and everything is naturally related and interconnected. A volume could I write you on this subject.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/158/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 158.

God, War, People, Truth

“The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

Writing for the court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

Religion, Law, Support, Personality

“One of the most wonderful and engaging things I've learned is that we are the culmination and extension of each other's histories and there is more that binds us together than separates us, and in discovering this, perhaps our needs are timeless and universal.
I have a very deep interest in religion and spirituality. I like the Sufi perspective, which suggests that it is better to participate in the world than to become detached from the world.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

Celtic Women in Music interview (1999)

World, Religion, History, Learning

“Women are more evolved biologically and emotionally, that’s well known and it’s obvious. But they confuse sex and the spirit; they don’t separate. Men, as you know, always separate: they separate their human and dog natures.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Source: An extract from Jeet Thayil's Booker-shortlisted Narcopolis http://www.welovethisbook.com/features/extract-narcopolis, 10 September 2012 The Bookseller Media

Women, Men, Dogs, Sex

“Turning finally to the question raised, to be precise, it appears that [Hillary] Clinton received a slight majority of the vote. The apparent decisive victory [of Donald Trump] has to do with curious features of American politics: among other factors, the Electoral College residue of the founding of the country as an alliance of separate states; the winner-take-all system in each state; the arrangement of congressional districts (sometimes by gerrymandering) to provide greater weight to rural votes (in past elections, and probably this one too, Democrats have had a comfortable margin of victory in the popular vote for the House, but hold a minority of seats); the very high rate of abstention (usually close to half in presidential elections, this one included). Of some significance for the future is the fact that in the age 18-25 range, Clinton won handily, and Sanders had an even higher level of support. How much this matters depends on what kind of future humanity will face.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

First published in Truthout http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38360-trump-in-the-white-house-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky on 14 November 2016. Then published in the book Optimism over Despair in 2017, pages 121-122 (ISBN 9780241981979). <br class="br">Quotes 2010s, 2016

Age, Question, Support, Decision

“My first memory of Nirvana was getting a cassette of demos, which ended up becoming Bleach. Everybody's response was that this was an amazing band and these were amazing songs. It was another indication that the Northwest had something special that you couldn't argue with.
It was pretty shocking to see a threepiece that sounded like that, and trying to get inside the head of a guy who writes a song like "Floyd the Barber" – where does the kernel of a song like that start?
The Seattle scene benefitted from an MTV culture, and it was because of the way Nirvana looked and presented themselves that created this kind of unanimous support worldwide. Rock music had become kind of hedonistic – 35-year-old men taking a helicopter to the stage and dating supermodels, and going out of their way to separate themselves from their audience. Nirvana, more than any other band, rocked way harder, had significant originality, while looking like guys you went to high school with. I think that was their secret. There was an inclusion that was long overdue, and it was what rock was supposed to be about.
The legend isn't simply going to be the way that he took his life; I believe it will always be the songs.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Soundgarden Era

Life, Men, Secret, School

“We have discussed quantity, order and meaning with regard to their contributions to science in general and to psychology in particular. We extracted each of our categories from a different science, but we claimed that despite their different origins, they are all universally applicable. And as a matter of fact, in our treatment of the issues involved in each of our three categories we have found the same general principle: to integrate quantity and quality, mechanism and vitalism, explanation and comprehension or understanding, we had to abandon the treatment of a number of separate facts for the consideration of a group of facts in their specific form of connection. Only thus could quantity be qualitative, and order and meaning be saved from being either introduced into the system of science as new entities, the privileges of life and mind, or discarded as mere figments.
Do we then claim that all facts are contained in such interconnected groups or units that each quantification is a description of true quality, each complex and sequence of events orderly and meaningful? In short, do we claim that the universe and all events in it form one big gestalt?”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 21-22

Life, Understanding, Universe, Science

“A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Настоящее произведение искусства делает то, что в сознании воспринимающего уничтожается разделение между ним и художником...
What is Art? (1897)

Art

“Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined — even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness — to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), Ch. 4, part 6: The American Destiny, p. 229.

Selfishness

“The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The War on Religion
LewRockwell.com
2003-12-30
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul148.html
2000s, 2001-2005

“Cultural essentialism is, thus, intimately tied to power relations. Fixity, homogeneity and separateness are prioritised within an essentialist framework. Therefore, part of any effort to resist essentialism is recognising diversity within difference, contingency, mutability and connectedness.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.393

Effort, Parting

“It is only after prolonged, and often painful, self-examination that any of us can realise the extent to which our minds are in bondage to words, to phrases, to formulae. We are the children of an age which spends the best energies of its life in the discussion of life, in an atmosphere of deferred fulfillment, continually postponing the act of living to the work of mentally preparing to live. Preoccupied with these preparations, we become skeptical as to all that lies beyond; and if for a moment we pass the boundary which separates the area of discussion from the fact discussed, our minds become troubled and amazed, and we conclude, strangely enough, that we are in a land of moonshine and of dreams.”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

Life, Pain, Children, Age

“The Buddhist view is more congruent with evolution than are other views. You can actually have beginning-less-ness and still have creation of a particular universe … The part that doesn't jibe for me is the whole notion that consciousness is this separate thing that goes in and out of sentient beings.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

Science and Spirit interview (2004)

Universe, Parting

“A separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 36

“People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don't strive or exert themselves. They're moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field- not only show business- often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood. I wasn't an unloved or an unwanted child, but I was moved around a lot, and then death and cruel circumstances brought many painful separations.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Page 21
Love, Lucy (1996)

Death, Pain, Happiness, People

“Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Not found in any writings of Madison. The earliest known appearance is a 1994 pamphlet from the Militia of Montana. See “In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution”, above, for a sourced quote with a related theme.
Misattributed

“To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body—both go together, they can’t be separated.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Quoted in: Richard Roud, Godard, introduction (1967, repr. 1970).

“The 92-page court en banc decision penned by Justice Lucas P. Bersamin ruled that there are three (3) acts and practices under the DAP which are deemed “UNCONSTITUTIONAL for being in violation of Section 25(5), Article VI of the 1987 Constitution and the doctrine of separation of powers.””

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Justice, Decision

“I write to say that in the idea of the three American states' ultimate independence, whether separately or in union, I see nothing fanciful. [Such] are at present the dominating trends in the U. S. that I see no other means of ultimate preservation of cultural and societal values that will not only be endangered but eventually destroyed by an endlessly prolonged association … with the remainder of what is now the U. S. A.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

In a 1993 letter to Thomas Naylor, on the idea of the secession of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont from the US, as quoted in "Most Likely to Secede" by Christopher Ketcham in Good magazine (10 January 2008) http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/most_likely_to_secede

Idea

Quotes about separation page 4

Quotes about separation
page 4