Quotes about unit
page 22

Antony Flew photo

“The term 'fundamentalist', which was coined in 1920, derives from the title of a series of tracts - The Fundamentals - published in the United States from 1910 to 1915. It has since been implicitly defined as meaning a person who believes that, since The Bible is the Word of God, every proposition in it must be true; a belief which, notoriously, is taken to commit fundamentalist Christians to defending the historicity of the accounts of the creation of the Universe given in the first two chapters of Genesis. On this understanding a fully believing Christian does not have to be fundamentalist. Instead it is both necessary and sufficient to accept the Apostles' and/or The Nicene Creed. In Islam, however, the situation is altogether different. For, whereas only a very small proportion of all the propositions contained in the Old and New Testaments are presented as statements made directly by God in any of the three persons of the Trinity, The Koran consists entirely and exclusively of what are alleged to be revelations from Allah (God). Therefore, with regard to The Koran, all Muslims must be as such fundamentalists; and anyone denying anything. asserted in The Koran ceases, ipso facto, to be properly accounted a Muslim. Those whom the media call fundamentalists would therefore better be described as revivalists. This conceptual truth not only places a tight limitation upon the possibilities of developmental change within Islam, as opposed to the tacit or open abandonment of one or more of its original particular claims, but also opens up the theoretical possibility of falsifying the Islamic system as a whole by presenting some known fact which is inconsistent with a Koranic assertion.”

Antony Flew (1923–2010) British analytic and evidentialist philosopher

Turning away from Mecca (The Salisbury Review, Spring 1996) quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. https://web.archive.org/web/20171026023112/http://www.bharatvani.org:80/books/foe/index.htm

Calvin Coolidge photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Mark Skousen photo
Hermann Rauschning photo
Anthony Kennedy photo
Fareed Zakaria photo
George W. Bush photo

“Universal human dignity, that unites our country.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2014, U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Spousal Program (August 2014)

António de Oliveira Salazar photo

“The United Nations is useless…and also harmful. It is a land that flowers demagoguery with a bunch of newborn countries, devoid of any tradition.”

António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) Prime Minister of Portugal

Quoted in Memories of an unfinished war: Canada, the United States and the decolonization process in Angola, page 153; By Manuel Francisco Gomes; Collaborator Alberto João Jardim; Published by Edições Colibri, 2006, ISBN 9727725945, 9789727725946, 241 pages

Alexandra Kollontai photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Allen West (politician) photo

“The first thing you’ve got to do is study and understand what we’re up against. You must realize that this is not a religion that you’re fighting against. You’re fighting against a theo-political belief system and construct. You’re fighting against something that’s been doing this thing since 622 AD - 7th century - 1,388 years. You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at LePonto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? You want to ask the Christian – I mean the Germanic and Austrian – knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened at Constantinople and why today it’s called Istanbul? Because they lost that fight in 1453. You need to get into the Qur'an, you need to understand their precepts, you need to read the Sunnah, you need to read the Hadith and then you can really understand this is not a perversion: They are doing exactly what this book says. I want to close by saying this, and I think we’ve said this all through this morning so far: Until we get principled leadership in the United States that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is and then understand their goals and objectives - which is on any jihadist website - and then come up with the right and proper goals and objectives to not only secure our republic, but to secure western civilization.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

Response to question: Why would [Islamist terrorists] warp a religion to justify attacking the United States. [Hudson Institute, Reclaim American Liberty Conference, January 13, 2010, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=hudson_upcoming_events&id=741, March 22, 2011]
2010s

Clement Attlee photo
Arlen Specter photo

“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will…authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president’s acts declared unconstitutional.”

Arlen Specter (1930–2012) American politician; former United States Senator from Pennsylvania

Preparing a bill to allow Congress to sue the president in federal court; reported in "[ Sen. Specter preparing bill to sue Bush http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14020234/", NBC News (July 24, 2006).

Neal Stephenson photo
Langston Hughes photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo

“In my judgment, the slogan "black power" and what has been associated with it has set the civil rights movement back considerably in the United States over the period of the last several months.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Remark during testimony of Floyd McKissick before a Senate subcommittee of which Kennedy was a member (December 8, 1966); reported in Federal Role in Urban Affairs, hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 89th Congress, 2d session, part 11, p. 2312 (1967)

John Bright photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Al Gore photo
Harper Lee photo
Newton Lee photo
David Dixon Porter photo

“I think every man should be obliged to take that oath, for I have seen more treason in the last ten days than I ever supposed could exist in the United States Navy.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 34– 35

Václav Havel photo

“I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Interview for the French newspaper Le Monde (29 April 1999); this statement is considered the source of the term w:Humanitarian bombing", frequently used about the Kosovo War.

Jonathan Arnott photo

“As a right-winger and UKIP member, I believe in immigration. That sentence might sound slightly surprising coming from the General Secretary of a Party which is perceived by the media as anti-immigration. So let me explain. I reject uncontrolled immigration. I reject immigration beyond the ability of our country’s infrastructure to cope. Recently, I’ve been listening to the Bruce Springsteen song ‘American Land’. It starts off well enough, talking about people relocating to America as it grew and helping to build the country. That’s the kind of immigration that I believe in. Those who believe that they can have a better life (in this case in the UK), who come over and are determined to see themselves as part of British culture and will put their heart and soul into improving this country for all of us. I’m talking about the kind of person who is proud to come to the United Kingdom and shows that pride at every opportunity. Such people are a real asset to the country. That’s why I’m so angry at the ‘left-wing’ in British politics, which has consistently pursued an effective open-door immigration policy. Uncontrolled mass immigration doesn’t provide any of those benefits, but instead creates huge cultural problems for us. Worse still, it creates resentment. In Sheffield, I see workers losing their jobs to immigrant workers. All that does is create resentment and fuels the kind of racism that we’ve painstakingly worked to get rid of from our nation.”

Jonathan Arnott (1981) British politician

I believe….in immigration? http://www.jonathanarnott.co.uk/2013/06/i-believe-in-immigration/ (June 23, 2013)

Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Ramsay MacDonald photo
Gregory of Nyssa photo

“As virtue is a thing that has no master, that is, is free, everything that is free will be united with virtue.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection, Patrologia Graeca 46.101-105

Stephen Harper photo
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

“Nothing is so difficult to change as the traditional habits of a free people in regard to such things. Such changes may be easily made in despotic countries like Russia, or in countries where notwithstanding theoretical freedom the government and the police are all powerful as in France… Can you expect that the people of the United Kingdom will cast aside all the names of space and weight and capacity which they learnt from their infancy and all of a sudden adopt an unmeaning jargon of barbarous words representing ideas and things new to their minds. It seems to me to be a dream of pedantic theorists… I see no use however in attempting to Frenchify the English nation, and you may be quite sure that the English nation will not consent to be Frenchified. There are many conceited men who think that they have given an unanswerable argument in favour of any measure they may propose by merely saying that it has been adopted by the French. I own that I am not of that school, and I think the French have much to gain by imitating us than we have to gain by imitating them. The fact is there are a certain set of very vain men like Ewart and Cobden who not finding in things as they are here, the prominence of position to which they aspire, think that they gain a step by oversetting any of our arrangements great or small and by holding up some foreign country as an object of imitation.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Thomas Milner Gibson (5 May 1864), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 507.
1860s

Ken Ham photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“But you cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall. I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about.”

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

Full transcripts of Trump's calls with Mexico and Australia By Greg Miller, Julie Vitkovskaya and Reuben Fischer-Baum; Aug. 3, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.95d2f93766d6 (Friday, January 27, 2017)
2010s, 2016, January

Robert Jordan photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Rand Paul photo

“It has been estimated that even in the absence of net investment, the mere substitution of modern machinery for worn-out equipment in the United States would cause an annual productivity increase of approximately 1.5 percent.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Four, Standstill and Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, II, p. 88

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert photo
Herman Cain photo
Russell Brand photo

“The world is changing and we are awakening. These statistics give us a numerical glimpse at the visceral dissatisfaction that most of us feel. Now is the time to express it. These corrupt structures cannot be maintained without our compliance. You could vote against them, if there was anything to vote for, but there isn’t, or you could stop paying your mortgage, stop paying your taxes, stop buying stuff you don’t need. When we, the majority, unite and demonstrate our new intention, we will be invincible. If we, who are complicit by our silence, become active and disobedient. This is a pivotal time in the history of our species. We are transitioning from an ideology that places power and responsibility in the hands of the few to one where we all collectively have power. It is important that we clarify, in a manner accessible to all, which institutions and systems are beneficial and which ones have to go. It is important that we propose ideas and systems that will be advantageous, like the handful in this book, and ensure that they are presented properly. When they are inevitably disparaged by the fearful enemies of change, we must remain unified and insistent. At this climactic time, we have no choice but change. This book, written by a twerp, with minimal interaction with brilliant thinkers and uncorrupted minds, demonstrates that. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

Revolution (2014)

Matilda Joslyn Gage photo

“The State, agent and slave of the Church, has so long united with it in suppression of woman’s intelligence, has so long preached of power to man alone, that it has created an inherited tendency, an inborn line of thought toward repression.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 543 as quoted in K. M. Talreja, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible: A Comparative Study https://books.google.com/books?id=9qkoAAAAYAAJ, New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan, 2000

John Gray photo
Joe Biden photo

“No President of the United States could represent the United States were he not committed to human rights. If you don't understand this, you can't deal with us. President Barack Obama would not be able to stay in power if he did not speak of it. So look at it as a political imperative. It doesn't make us better or worse. It's who we are. You make your decisions. We'll make ours.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

To Jinping Xi (2011-2012), as quoted in "Born Red: How Xi Jinping, an unremarkable provincial administrator, became China’s most authoritarian leader since Mao." http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/born-red (6 April 2015), by Evan Osnos, The New Yorker.
2010s

Allen C. Guelzo photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Samuel Adams photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“In the United States, international business still means the U. S. and the rest of the world. Here it is different. We wanted to learn about the reality of international business and understand the role and scope of strategy within that.”

Renée Mauborgne American economist

Renée Mauborgne in: Stuart Crainer, " W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne: The Thought Leader Interview http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11695?gko=d33f3," strategy+business, January 12, 2002. First Quarter 2002. Issue 26 (originally published by Booz & Company)

Carl Sagan photo

“Astronomically, the U. S. S. R. and the United States are the same place.”

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 196

Georg Brandes photo
Kofi Annan photo
Alexander Hamilton photo
Owen Lovejoy photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Paul DiMaggio photo
Russell Conwell photo
Adlai Stevenson photo

“After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

As quoted in The New York Times (14 August 1964)

Augustus De Morgan photo

“A finished or even a competent reasoner is not the work of nature alone… education develops faculties which would otherwise never have manifested their existence. It is, therefore, as necessary to learn to reason before we can expect to be able to reason, as it is to learn to swim or fence, in order to attain either of those arts. Now, something must be reasoned upon, it matters not much what it is, provided that it can be reasoned upon with certainty. The properties of mind or matter, or the study of languages, mathematics, or natural history may be chosen for this purpose. Now, of all these, it is desirable to choose the one… in which we can find out by other means, such as measurement and ocular demonstration of all sorts, whether the results are true or not.
.. Now the mathematics are peculiarly well adapted for this purpose, on the following grounds:—
1. Every term is distinctly explained, and has but one meaning, and it is rarely that two words are employed to mean the same thing.
2. The first principles are self-evident, and, though derived from observation, do not require more of it than has been made by children in general.
3. The demonstration is strictly logical, taking nothing for granted except the self-evident first principles, resting nothing upon probability, and entirely independent of authority and opinion.
4. When the conclusion is attained by reasoning, its truth or falsehood can be ascertained, in geometry by actual measurement, in algebra by common arithmetical calculation. This gives confidence, and is absolutely necessary, if… reason is not to be the instructor, but the pupil.
5. There are no words whose meanings are so much alike that the ideas which they stand for may be confounded.
…These are the principal grounds on which… the utility of mathematical studies may be shewn to rest, as a discipline for the reasoning powers. But the habits of mind which these studies have a tendency to form are valuable in the highest degree. The most important of all is the power of concentrating the ideas which a successful study of them increases where it did exist, and creates where it did not. A difficult position or a new method of passing from one proposition to another, arrests all the attention, and forces the united faculties to use their utmost exertions. The habit of mind thus formed soon extends itself to other pursuits, and is beneficially felt in all the business of life.”

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

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

“The biological organism and the social persona are profoundly different social constructions. The different systems of social practices, including discourse practices, through which these two notions are constituted, have their meanings, and are made use of, are radically incommensurable. The biological notion of a human organism as an identifiable individual unit of analysis depends on the specific scientific practices we use to construct the identity, the boundedness, the integrity, and the continuity across interactions of this unit. The criteria we use to do so: DNA signatures, neural micro-anatomy, organism-environment boundaries, internal physiological interdependence of subsystems, external physical probes of identification at distinct moments of physical time -- all depend on social practices and discourses profoundly different from those in terms of which we define the social person.
The social-biographical person is also an individual insofar as we construct its identity, boundedness, integrity, and continuity. But the social practices and discourses we deploy in these constructions are quite different. We define the social person in terms of social interactions, social roles, socially and culturally meaningful behavior patterns. We construct from these notions of the personal identity of an individual the separateness and independence of that individual from the social environment with which it transacts, the internal unity or integrity of the individual as a consistent persona, and the continuity of that persona across social interactions.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 68

Paulo Freire photo

“In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4, Unity for Liberation

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Manouchehr Mottaki photo

“The United States must accept the responsibilities arising from the occupation of Iraq, and should not finger point or put the blame on others.”

Manouchehr Mottaki (1953) Iranian politician

Iran FM attacks US policy in Iraq http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6621821.stm 4 May 2007

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce photo
William Cowper photo

“United yet divided, twain at once:
So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book I, The Sofa, Line 77.

Peter Medawar photo
Roger Scruton photo
William Westmoreland photo
Immortal Technique photo
Kenneth N. Waltz photo
Hassan Rouhani photo
Enoch Powell photo

“The continuance of India within the British Empire is essential to the Empire's existence and is consequently a paramount interest both of the United Kingdom and of the Dominions…for strategic purposes there is no half-way house between an India fully within the Empire and an India totally outside it…Should it once be admitted or proved that Indians cannot govern themselves except by leaving the Empire – in other words, that the necessary goal of political development for the most important section of His Majesty's non-European subjects is independence and not Dominion status – then the logically inevitable outcome will be the eventual and probably the rapid loss to the Empire of all its other non-European parts. It would extinguish the hope of a lasting union between "white" and "coloured" which the conception of a common subjectship to the King-Emperor affords and to which the development of the Empire hitherto has given the prospect of leading…In discussion of the wealth of India it is usual to forget the principal item, which is four hundred millions of human beings, for the most part belonging to races neither unintelligent nor slothful…[British policy should be to] create the preconditions of democracy and self-government by as soon as possible making India socially and economically a modern state.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Memorandum on Indian Policy (16 May 1946), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), pp. 104-105.
1940s

Samuel Adams photo

“!-- A motion was made and seconded, that the report of the Committee made on Monday last, be amended, so far as to add the following to the first article therein mentioned, viz.: ' -->And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of time press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Rejected resolution for a clause to add to the first article of the U.S. Constitution, in the debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 (6 February 1788); this has often been attributed to Adams, but he is nowhere identified as the person making the resolution in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Held in the year 1788 And which finally ratified the Constitution of the United States. (1856) p. 86. https://archive.org/details/debatesandproce00peirgoog<!-- Printed by the Resolves of the Legislature, 1856. Boston: William White, Printer of the Commonwealth.
Variant: The said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms...
As quoted in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1850) edited by Peirce & Hale
Disputed

Edward Burns photo
Joseph Beuys photo
Tiberius photo
Max Stirner photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo

“That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If for instance, +1, -1, √-1 had been called direct, inverse, and lateral units, instead of positive, negative, and imaginary (or even impossible) such an obscurity would have been out of question.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

In Theoria residiorum biquadraticorum, Commentatio secunda; Werke, Bd. 2 (Goettingen, 1863), p.177. As quoted by Robert Edouard Moritz in Memorabilia mathematica: the philomath's quotation book (1914) p. 282.

Vladimir Lenin photo
Jeffrey Montgomery photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Gopal Krishna Gokhale photo
Osama bin Laden photo

“We say our terror against America is blessed terror in order to put an end to suppression, in order for the United States to stop its support to Israel.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Video statement broadcast on the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera TV station. (26 December 2001) http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/world/0302/timeline.bin.laden.audio/content.5.html.
2000s, 2002

Paul Krugman photo
Bruce Palmer Jr. photo
Russell Brand photo
Henry Adams photo
Enoch Powell photo

“The Prime Minister constantly asserts that the nuclear weapon has kept the peace in Europe for the last 40 years… Let us go back to the middle 1950s or to the end of the 1940s, and let us suppose that nuclear power had never been invented… I assert that in those circumstances there would still not have been a Russian invasion of western Europe. What has prevented that from happening was not the nuclear hypothesis… but the fact that the Soviet Union knew the consequences of such a move, consequences which would have followed whether or not there were 300,000 American troops stationed in Europe. The Soviet Union knew that such an action on its part would have led to a third world war—a long war, bitterly fought, a war which in the end the Soviet Union would have been likely to lose on the same basis and in the same way as the corresponding war was lost by Napoleon, by the Emperor Wilhelm and by Adolf Hitler…
For of course a logically irresistible conclusion followed from the creed that our safety depended upon the nuclear capability of the United States and its willingness to commit that capability in certain events. If that was so—and we assured ourselves for 40 years that it was—the guiding principle of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom had to be that, in no circumstances, must it depart from the basic insights of the United States and that any demand placed in the name of defence upon the United Kingdom by the United States was a demand that could not be resisted. Such was the rigorous logic of the nuclear deterrent…
It was in obedience to it… that the Prime Minister said, in the context of the use of American bases in Britain to launch an aggressive attack on Libya, that it was "inconceivable" that we could have refused a demand placed upon this country by the United States. The Prime Minister supplied the reason why: she said it was because we depend for our liberty and freedom upon the United States. Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it.
A few days ago I was reminded, when reading a new biography of Richard Cobden, that he once addressed a terrible sentence of four words to this House of Commons. He said to hon. Members: "You have been Englishmen." The strength of those words lies in the perfect tense, with the implication that they were so no longer but had within themselves the power to be so again. I believe that we now have the opportunity, with the dissolution of the nightmare of the nuclear theory, for this country once again to have a defence policy that accords with the needs of this country as an island nation, and to have a foreign policy which rests upon a true, undistorted view of the outside world. Above all, we have the opportunity to have a foreign policy that is not dictated from outside to this country, but willed by its people. That day is coming. It may be delayed, but it will come.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech on Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/apr/07/foreign-affairs (7 April 1987).
1980s

Donald J. Trump photo
Sam Houston photo