Thomas Carlyle Quotes
Insurrection, never so necessary, is a most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct them are surely getting into the fatalest course.
In the Vietnam War, America and her allies were defending the South Vietnamese from the Communist and Nationalist incursions of the North Vietnamese. However, the South Vietnamese government was itself a very fragile democracy which provided rights little better than the Ho Chi Min lead government of the North. Further, the South Vietnamese rulers and governments while claiming to be democracies, were little more than in name only and were very corrupt. As with many unstable and weak governments, South Vietnam had experienced a succession of coups, with some of his advisors favoring the coups and a few actualy supporting them. Johnson was continually frustrated by this and this expression was his own inimitable style.
Vladimir Lenin. This galvanized the October Revolution which put the Bolsheviks in power ousting the Kerensky government.
Germany, after its defeat in WWI was going through massive demonstrations and strikes. The government kept issuing bulletins that “Order Prevails” and the like. Luxemburg’s rhetoric and writing was so damaging to the government that they had her assassinated shortly after this statement.
This quotation shows that the dissent leading to the American Revolution did not emerge suddenly in 1776 after the Battle of Bunker Hill. Dissent, sedition and even violence was documented here in 1774. Salem at the time was the second largest port in the colony and the customs tax collectors—Loyalist Americans—were run out of Salem.
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).
