Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙, November 12, 1866 – March 12, 1925) was a Chinese revolutionary leader and statesman who is considered by many to be the "Father of Modern China". He was known as several names including 孫中山 and 孫文. He had a significant influence in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and establishment of the original Republic of China.

Quotes

 * It is only after mature deliberation and thorough preparation that I have decided upon the Program of Revolution and defined the procedure of the revolution in three stages. The first is the period of military government; the second, the period of political tutelage; and the third, the period of constitutional government.
 * The Three Phases of National Reconstruction (1918)


 * The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit...they are just a heap of loose sand...Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.
 * China as a Heap of Loose Sand (1924)


 * China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx's class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable.
 * Capital and the State (1924)


 * In the construction of a country, it is not the practical workers but the idealists and planners that are difficult to find.
 * Chung-shan Ch'üan-shu (Zhongshan Quanshu), vol. II (1936)


 * To understand is difficult; to act is easy.
 * As quoted in Great Britain and the East, Vol. 61, Issues 1727-1742 (1944), p. 19


 * Only powerful people have liberty.
 * As quoted in "The Economist" (8 October 2011), p. 67

Quotes about Sun

 * A revolution in 1911 had overthrown the last Qing Emperor, but the republic that succeeded him had proved a precarious structure. Although it had led the revolution and went on to win a clear majority in elections to the National Assembly, the Nationalist Party (Guomindang), led by Sun Yatsen, was forced to yield the presidency to the militarily powerful Yuan Shikai. Yuan was able to crush a second revolution instigated by the Guomindang, but his bid to make himself Emperor ended with his death in 1916. Japanese wartime demands had stoked up nationalist sentiment, particularly among educated Chinese. Indeed, when the Paris peacemakers awarded Japan the former German possessions in Shandong there were furious protests by students in Beijing, culminating in the Tiananmen Square demonstration of May 4, 1919. However, the nationalist movement soon split between a revived Guomindang and a new Chinese Communist Party. The rest of China seemed on the verge of disintegration as warlord clans carved out their own fiefdoms, the Anfu controlling the provinces of Anhui and Fujien, the Zhili running Hebei and the area around Beijing, and the Fengtien notionally in charge of Manchuria. Meanwhile, the country's most important economic centres were under one form or another of foreign control as the system of treaty ports and extraterritoriality reached its zenith.
 * Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 291-292