"I have a message I need delivered to the Jarl of Whiterun. Deliver this axe to Balgruuf the Greater." [...] "Yes. An axe. How long have you been in Skyrim? Give the man my axe. If he keeps it, I will bide my time. If he returns it to you, it means war. Men who understand each other often have no need for words. There are but a few simple truths behind one warrior giving another his axe. Balgruuf will know my meaning."
"You are either with us or with the terrorists."
"He takes a card and shades one half of it in dark
So he can demonstrate to you just what he means.
He says, "There's black and there is white,
And there is wrong, and there is right,
And there is nothing, nothing in between."
That's what Mr. A said.
So he can demonstrate to you just what he means.
He says, "There's black and there is white,
And there is wrong, and there is right,
And there is nothing, nothing in between."
That's what Mr. A said.
— Alan Moore, "Mr. A"
"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'"
— Quentin Crisp
Quaritch: Hey Sully, how's it feel to betray your own race?
[Jake hisses]
Quaritch: You think you're one of them? Time to wake up.
[Jake hisses]
Quaritch: You think you're one of them? Time to wake up.
"There are no good aliens or bad aliens, Yeager. It's just us and them... and you chose them."
—Harold Attinger, Transformers: Age of Extinction
"There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Those who refuse to fight alongside you are yet more enemies that must be crushed utterly. "
"He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters."
"Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you."
"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."
"If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.' The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security."
"I will consider a declaration of neutrality to be a declaration of war against me."
— Genghis Khan
"Every inhabitant of the Brigade should either be an active friend or be classed as an enemy. "
— J. Franklin Bell
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."
— Charles Rosner
"Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"It is with absolute frankness that we speak of this struggle of the proletariat; each man must choose between joining our side or the other side. Any attempt to avoid taking sides in this issue must end in fiasco."
— Vladimir Lenin
Escad: Whose side are you on? Mine or not mine?
Main Character: I don't kn-
Escad: Then DIE!
Main Character: What is WRONG with you?
Main Character: I don't kn-
Escad: Then DIE!
Main Character: What is WRONG with you?
—Comment summing up Escad's motives in Legend of Mana
Tucker: You're either with me...
Sam: Or you're against him!
Both: SO WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON!?
Sam: Or you're against him!
Both: SO WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON!?
—Danny Phantom, "Mystery Meat"
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
—Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Anybody who gets in my way is my enemy."
"Everyone who isn't us is an enemy"
—Cersei Lannister, Game of Thrones
"Your life depends on us: JOIN US OR DIE!"
—Eurasian Dynasty recruitment propaganda, Earth 2150
"I didn't fucking spend my time living through the era of Vietnam to fucking come around to this fucking time and not having learned that the goddamn situation boils down to this: If you're against the war, it doesn't mean that you're for the other side! If people show up with signs that go, 'GO IRAQ, YOU FUCKERS GO!' then you go, 'Holy Shit,' then you beat the fuck out of them."
— Lewis Black, Rules of Enragement
"Everybody's so busy wanting to be down with the gang. 'I'm conservative', 'I'm liberal', 'I'm conservative'. Bullshit! Be a fucking person! Lis-ten! Let it swirl around your head. Then form your opinion. No normal, decent person is one thing, okay? I've got some shit I'm conservative about, I've got some shit I'm liberal about. Crime, I'm conservative. Prostitution, I'm liberal!"
— Chris Rock, Never Scared
"You are Wonkru, or you are the enemy of Wonkru. Choose."
— Octavia Blake, The 100
"I am not Charlie. I am not the terrorist either. I do not have to be Charlie to loathe the terrorists, and I do not have to resort to terrorism to register my displeasure with Charlie. We are increasingly living in a time of overlapping spaces, and overlapping identities. The reality of most people is multi-dimensional. In such a world, we get to choose what we like and embrace it, and skip what we don't and move on.
We are all the product of the collective human experience that is deliciously diverse, very little of which is mutually-exclusive. The idea that it's an all or nothing, and even worse, that it's all good and nothing bad when it's us, and all bad and nothing good when it's the other is wildly offensive."
— Ahmed Rehab, Who's Gunning for the Francophile Anti-Islamophobe?
"You should have disagreements with your leaders and your colleagues, but if it becomes immediately a question of questioning people's motives, and if immediately you decide that somebody who sees a whole new situation differently than you must be a bad person and somehow twisted inside, we are not going to get very far in forming a more perfect union."
"A long time ago, my dad heard Malcolm X speak at a church in Memphis. He said that during slave days, you had the house Negro, and the field Negro.
The house Negro lived in the master's house, ate the same food as the master, lived in a warm room, usually in the basement. If the master got a cold, he was right there to help out, all cheerful and friendly because he wanted his own life to be good, and that meant making the master happy.
The field Negro ate whatever scraps the dogs didn't eat, lived out in a cold shack, was beaten and kicked — and when the master got sick, he prayed every day the master would die. Didn't matter if the master was technically a nice guy or not. The master represented the system, and it was the system he hated."
The house Negro lived in the master's house, ate the same food as the master, lived in a warm room, usually in the basement. If the master got a cold, he was right there to help out, all cheerful and friendly because he wanted his own life to be good, and that meant making the master happy.
The field Negro ate whatever scraps the dogs didn't eat, lived out in a cold shack, was beaten and kicked — and when the master got sick, he prayed every day the master would die. Didn't matter if the master was technically a nice guy or not. The master represented the system, and it was the system he hated."
—Nighthawk, Supreme Power
Salaman: You're either with us, or against us!
Philip: I'm not with you, nor am I against you.
[Beat]
Salaman: Can he do that?
Jack: He's religious, I think it's required.
Philip: I'm not with you, nor am I against you.
[Beat]
Salaman: Can he do that?
Jack: He's religious, I think it's required.
Anders' fanaticism colors his every encounter: Aveline's deliberate turning of a blind eye to Anders - an Abomination, no less - isn't good enough for him; he has to complain that she doesn't let every mage her guards capture go free. When they visit the Alienage, Anders comments that because of their oppression, the Elves should, quote, "be on our side." It doesn't occur to him to say "we should work with the Elves," its "the Elves should be working with us." Anders is a "my cause first, even discussing nuance is heresy" kind of fanatic: he feels no extreme is taking it too far, but will condemn even the most trifling act of those he disagrees with as if they were feeding pregnant women to hungry sharks. Anders is the kind of fanatic that doesn't care about winning hearts and minds, just about winning - and so consequently, always loses. If you think of the Mage Issue as being like drug prohibition, Tim The Enchanter is the one that says to people "we should decriminalize marijuana as a first step in showing how society isn't going to collapse," - but then Anders cuts him off because Tim's not advocating heroin-filled vending machines be placed in schools tomorrow. Anders is insufferable because even if you're on his side, you're still not on his side enough for him, not unless you're almost as insane as he is!
—SF Debris reviews Dragon Age II
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative."
— Kurt Vonnegut, Cold Turkey
"But I also feel like we should stop calling feminists ‘feminists’ and just start calling people who aren’t feminist ‘sexist’...”
Bad: Tommy, Tommy. People are allowed to like the Egg, they are allowed to hate the Egg...
Tommy: I just– I didn't have any opinion on it. I was neutral.
Bad: Nobody is allowed to be neutral, Tommy.
Tommy: I just– I didn't have any opinion on it. I was neutral.
Bad: Nobody is allowed to be neutral, Tommy.
Gorilla Grodd: There is a place for you in the Society.
Enchantress: I prefer to freelance.
Gorilla Grodd: If you're not with me, you're dead!
Enchantress: I prefer to freelance.
Gorilla Grodd: If you're not with me, you're dead!
Cesar: You make up your mind, Carlos. (brandishes a gun at him) You are with them, or you are with us.
Carlos: Is that loaded?
Cesar: Of course.
Carlos: I am with us.
"The whole point of "human rights" is that you tend to support them regardless of what those people believe. My criticisms of certain Israeli actions in the 1948 war or thereafter have nothing to do with my positions on how they or the Palestinians approach LGBT rights. Likewise, when I make videos calling out left-wingers who support Hamas, October 7th denial, all those things, that doesn't mean I'm implicitly endorsing everything Israel does. Everyone understands this; if I bring up a story of, say, the Pakistani government forcing out nearly 400,000 Afghan refugees, pushing them straight into the hands of the Taliban government that they were fleeing, it would be pretty weird if someone's response to that was, "Uh… ahem, sorry, but… as a progressive, you do understand that most of those Afgans probably don't support gender affirming care, right?" This is a ridiculous argument. I don't know why people make it, I don't know why people think it's a clever thing to say, I'm sure there are some people out there who think Palestinians have progressive views on queer rights… um, I'm not one of them."
— LonerBox regarding some arguments surrounding the Arab–Israeli Conflict
regarding some arguments surrounding the Arab–Israeli Conflict