Thomas Carlyle Quotes
Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas is as good as that of Jesus.
Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881, Scottish essayist and historian, Member of Parliament, Quoted by Wendell Phillips, Speech, Harvard University, June 30, 1881
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This line was used at his trial to show that he had communist tendencies. He and the 9 others refused to answer a Congressional Committee’s questions about their political beliefs and affiliations. Trumbo served a year in jail for Contempt of Congress and then was blacklisted for years, but he was so good that Otto Preminger broke the Blacklist and hired him whereupon he was employed in many of the major films. He had actually won an Academy Award writing under the name of Robert Rich.
See 358821 for another expression of this idea.
This is a very important quotation. Abraham Lincoln obtained a printed copy of Parker’s sermon and underlined this quotation on his copy. Later when he was President he used a slight variation of Parker’s last phrase in the last line of his famous Gettysburg Address.
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish historian, satirical writer, essayist, translator, philosopher, mathematician, and teacher. In his book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1841), he argued that the actions of the "Great Man" play a key role in history, claiming that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men". Other major works include The French Revolution: A History, 3 vols (1837) and The History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great, 6 vols (1858–65).
