Joseph Stalin Quotes
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
{627488} is an earlier quotation by a French Diplomat of very similar sentiment, but it is not known if Stalin had ever seen it. Also See Beilby Porteus {627489} for an 18th century variation. This is a puzzling phenomenon. In the United States if there is a plane crash and a hundred people are killed, it is page one and television lead news. But between 40,000 and 50,000 Americans die each year, one or two at a time in auto crashes, and it does not seem to be news. More American college students commit suicide (about 1200 a year) then are killed in mining or other industrial accidents, but the former we rarely hear about.
Joseph Stalin, 1879-1953, Russian Premier, Statement to Winston Churchill at Teheran, Quoted in New York Times, September 28, 1958
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Traffic fatalities had been growing ever since the production of the automobile. See Stalin {616657} for another statement about large numbers of deaths. Today, for example, the death of 3 American soldiers in a day produces page one news. An airplane crash that kills 10 people will dominate the news, while on that same day 117 Americans will have been killed in automobile traffic deaths “diffused in time and space”.
This may have been the origin of the famous Stalin later quotation of very similar sentiment {616657}. No one is certain if Stalin had ever seen this work. Or he might have come upon it independently. The original source does not mention Massigli by name. However the description of the “Diplomat vom Quai d’Orsay” fits Massigli and his expertise so we attribute it to him. However, he was not the first to express this idea. The Anglican Bishop of London, Beilby Porteus, appears to have been the earliest—See {627489}.
This is the earliest version of this idea which was made famous with a statistical reference by Stalin speaking to Churchill {616657}. Also a French diplomat preceded Stalin {627488} .
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian revolutionary and the ruler of the Soviet Union from 1927 until 1953. He served as both General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he ultimately consolidated power to become the Soviet Union's de facto dictator by the 1930s. A communist ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin formalized these ideas as Marxism–Leninism while his own policies are known as Stalinism.
