Quotes About Divisiveness

I personally find it difficult to accept that there could be anyone on earth insensitive to the comic abilities of Laurel and Hardy, Sid Caesar, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, or Martin Short. But no matter who the comic entertainer is, there is always at least a minority prepared to say, 'What's all the excitement about? He doesn't seem funny to me.'

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

Hostility comes in all ages, sizes and shapes

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.

Trust a snake before a Jew and a Jew before a Greek, but don't trust an Armenian

I get tired of people trying to dog out the radio for not playing this or that. There are lots of people who like what they play - otherwise, they wouldn't play it.

Think about your friends on the Left - are they tolerant of people who aren't for gay marriage? Or of people who are pro-life? These used to be just political differences, and now they are a referendum on what type of person you are and whether you can be in someone's life at all.

Only in America can you find so many angry people claiming to love their country, while hating almost anyone in it.

Morality binds and blinds. This is not just something that happens to people on the other side. We all get sucked into tribal moral communities. We circle around sacred values and then share post hoc arguments about why we are so right and they are so wrong. We think the other side is blind to truth, reason, science, and common sense, but in fact everyone goes blind when talking about their sacred objects.

Las personas, al fin y al cabo, se unen a bandos políticos con los que comparten narrativas morales, y una vez que han aceptado una narrativa particular, se ciegan a otros mundos morales alternativos.

With all of the divisiveness that is going on in the country we live in, so much of it is based around just fear of the other. And anyone who does not look like me, walk like me, talk like me, have sex like me, they're the other and I'm afraid of them. And hopefully we will learn that it's just not scary. There's nothing to be afraid of.

I grew up in Derry, of course, and it was - Derry was the worst example of Northern Ireland's discrimination.

Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker.

The Tory Party only talks to Brexiteers. It almost demonises... It comes across as dismissive of those who are not.

Racial relations in this country are plummeting. Racial strife is rising. All the while, Obama is out there talking about unity and bringing us together.

Montagues and Capulets, French and English, Whig and Tory, Airbus and Boeing, Pepsi and Coke, Serb and Muslim, Christian and Saracen – we are irredeemably tribal creatures. The neighbouring or rival group, however defined, is automatically an enemy. Argentinians and Chileans hate each other because there is nobody else nearby to hate.

Through Palin, it seemed as if the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the modern Republican Party—xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward Black and brown folks—were finding their way to center stage.

we believe ourselves to be a tolerant people even as racial, religious, and cultural tensions roil the landscape. And instead of resolving these tensions or mediating these conflicts, our politics fans them, exploits them, and drives us further apart.

But elitism was inevitable with religion. Human beings just could not help themselves.

Humans are ingenious at sniffing out minor differences to figure out whom they should despise.

You either love or you hate. You live in the middle, you get nothing.

Given the divisiveness and pain that have accompanied several state religious freedom laws, I approach attempts at legislating religious exceptions to anti-discrimination laws with great sensitivity and care.

George Bush doesn't represent any civilization!