
“Never before, I suspect, have so many people been so rich to so little purpose.”
Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 209.
Source: People’s War, People’s Army (1962), pp. 4-5
Context: In August 1945, the capitulation of the Japanese forces before the and the Allied forces, put an end to the world war. The defeat of the German and Nippon fascists was the beginning of a great weakening of the capitalist system. After the great victory of the Soviet Union, many people's democracies saw the light of day. The socialist system was no longer confined within the frontiers of a single country. A new historic era was beginning in the world. In view of these changes, in Viet Nam, the Indo-chinese Communist Party and the Viet Minh called the whole Vietnamese nation to general insurrection. Everywhere, the people rose in a body. Demonstrations and displays of force followed each other uninterruptedly. In August, the Revolution broke out, neutralising the bewildered Nippon troops, overthrowing the pro-Japanese feudal authorities, and installing people's power in Hanoi and throughout the country, in the towns as well as in the countryside, in Bac Bo as well as in Nam Bo. In Hanoi, the capital, in September 2nd, the provisional gouvernment was formed around President Ho Chi Minh; it presented itself to the nation, proclaimed the independence of Viet Nam, and called on the nation to unite, to hold itself in readiness to defend the country and to oppose all attempts at imperialist aggression. The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam was born, the first people's democracy in South-east Asia. But the imperialists intended to nip the republican regime in the bud and once again transform Viet Nam into a colony. Three weeks had hardly gone by when, on September 23rd, 1945, the French Expeditionary Corps opened fire in Saigon. The whole was to be carried on for nine years at the cost of unprecedented heroism and amidst unimaginable difficulties, to end by the shining victory of our people and the crushing defeat of the aggressive imperialists at Dien Bien Phu.... Never before had there been so many foreign troops on the soil of Viet Nam. But never before either, had the Vietnamese people been so determined to rise up in combat to defend their country.
“Never before, I suspect, have so many people been so rich to so little purpose.”
Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 5, The World We Want, p. 209.
“Never had so much been surrendered by so many to so few.”
4 Jan 1941 https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-128/churchill-and-the-western-desert-campaign-1940-43/, after Operation Compass and the Italian surrender at Bardia in the Western Desert.
Quoted in B. H. Liddell Hart's A History of the Second World War (Cassell, 1970), p. 117
Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 396.
Context: As any television viewer or newspaper reader could discern the end in South Vietnam, in April 1975, came with incredible suddenness, amid scenes of unmitigated misery and shame. Utter defeat, panic, and rout have produced similar demoralizing tableaux through the centuries; yet to those of us who had worked so hard and long to try to keep it from ending that way, who had been so markedly conscious of the deaths and wounds of thousands of Americans and the soldiers of other countries, who had so long stood in awe of the stamina of the South Vietnamese soldier and civilian under the mantle of hardship, it was depressingly sad that so much misery should be a part of it. So immense had been the sacrifices made through so many long years that the South Vietnamese deserved an end- if it had to come to that- with more dignity to it.
“Never before has a ruler been so beloved by his own people, so highly esteemed by the whole world.”
Waldersee in his diary, 16 March 1888, on the recently deceased Kaiser Wilhelm I
“Never before have so many people understood so little about so much.”
Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You
Call My Name
Song lyrics, Musicology (2004)
As quoted in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), edited by Charles George Herbermann