# Roger Stone — "Politics is about dividing people" > [!quote] "Politics is not about uniting people. It's about dividing people. And getting your fifty-one percent." > — Roger Stone, *Get Me Roger Stone* (Netflix), 2017 ## Context Another of the self-described maxims [[Roger Stone]] offered in the 2017 documentary *Get Me Roger Stone*. It states plainly the majoritarian-by-subtraction theory of campaigning he has practiced since the Nixon era: you do not need to persuade everyone, only to split the electorate and assemble a bare winning share on your side of the cut. ## Why this matters This is the strategic thesis that the rest of Stone's toolkit serves. If victory requires only 51 percent obtained by division, then polarization is not a regrettable byproduct of campaigns but their actual product — and the deliberate manufacture of conflict becomes the core competency. The line is among the most-quoted articulations of intentional polarization as a governing-class strategy, and it connects Stone's [[Political Psychology]] of hatred-as-motivator to the broader degradation of consensus politics. A blunt, on-the-record receipt for division-as-strategy. ## Verification - **Source:** *Get Me Roger Stone* (Netflix, 2017); collected on [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roger_Stone) and [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6714534/quotes/). - **Status:** Verbatim, on camera, undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Roger Stone - hate is a stronger motivator than love]] — the psychological premise. - [[Roger Stone - admit nothing deny everything]] — the tactical playbook.