Denis Diderot Quotes
A nation can only regenerate itself in a bath of blood.
Denis Diderot, 1713-1784, French Philosopher, Quoted by Adam Zamoyski in “Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries, 1776-1781”
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The ambassador's hyperbole caused or was the excuse for President Lyndon Johnson to send the marines into the Dominican Republic. There were only two American civilian casualties—both were reporters accidently shot by U.S. Marines.
Urging use of force against the South:
Referring to the French Revolution:
Muslim League leaders wanted to stir up India's Muslims in order to prevent Indian Independence from Britain unless India were partitioned and the Muslims could have their own nation. At that point the British and the Congress Party of India—the majority political party were both starting to plan for independence. Most of the Muslim nationalists did not want to have any Muslims living in a Majority Hindu nation. To stop it, they first used fear claiming that when the British left, the Hindus would massacre all the Muslims. They galvanized the Muslims to first attack the Hindus to dissuade then from their attacks which at that point were imaginary except in the conspiracy theory of the Muslim League. The moral logic of this statement was similar, albeit not to the same bloody degree, as the famous quotation of Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater on extremism." H. S. Suhrawardy
The Turkish revolution was by historical standards relatively bloodless as compared especially with other republican revolutions like the United State and France. However, the revolution that brought Ataturk to power was a relatively mild one in terms of the immediate changes that unlike many revolutions which produced instant radical change. In Turkey, the radical change took place in the years after the revolution when Ataturk with hardly any bloodshed produced compulsory public secular education, scientific elevation in society, separation of mosque and state, gender equality including universal voting, change to western dress, elimination of the caliphate, speech and press freedom, and many others including changing the entire language to use the Latin alphabet instead of Arabic. No nation in history has gone thought more social and cultural change and modernized so fast as Turkey after its revolution. The result is the most modern and successful Islamic country in the world.
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.
