Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked.
A common danger unites even the bitterest enemies.
Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation', a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
We need a common enemy to unite us.
Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
We have a common enemy. We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy - the white man. He's an enemy to all of us. I know some of you all think that some of them aren't enemies. Time will tell.
The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
And as every spy knows, common enemies are how allies always begin.
Wherefore is this? Because our common enemy, the Devil, endeavours with all his might to oppose the intentions of the God-man, Christ. He endeavours to do everything in opposition to what Christ did and does.
The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.
My opinion was that if we had a common enemy we should get together commonly.
We share a common enemy, but does that make us friends?
A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.
Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.
A line is an involuntary combination of people who are simultaneously irritated with one another and focused on a single, common circle of interests and goals. This leads to a mixture of rivalry, hostility, and collective sentiment, a constant readiness to close ranks against a common enemy - anyone who breaks the rules.
Give people a common enemy, and you will give them a common identity. Deprive them of an enemy and you will deprive them of the crutch by which they know who they are.
There are reports that leaders from ISIS and al-Qaida met at a farm house in Syria last week, and agreed to work together against their common enemies. That story again: Two radical terrorist groups managed to do what two American political parties cannot.
[But] age, the common enemy of mankind, has laid his hand upon you; would that it had fallen upon some other, and that you were still young.
It is a matter of record that in the German Election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis - with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy : capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.
or simply:
