Socialism Quotes
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Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.
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More Socialism Quotes
To claim for Socialism that it is a class war is to do it an injustice and indefinitely postpone its triumph. Socialism offers a platform broad enough for all to stand upon. It makes war upon a system, not upon a class.
keir hardie— Said in 1908.
The trouble is with Socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas, and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider the opinions of others, and most of all, because Socialism is a mindset that regards the individual – and his rights – as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen when socialists acquire power.
l. neil smith— "Cambodian Road Trip," 15 March 2009
Socialism is, among other things, the political habitat of low self-esteem, incompetence, self-loathing, and a willingness to steal – or have stolen for you what you are unable or unwilling to work for. Socialism is a philosophy fit only for slugs, leaches, and mosquitoes.
l. neil smith— "Alice Shrugged,"[18] 18 December 2008
"The revelation of the secret of water will put an end to all manner of speculation or expediency and their excrescences, to which belong war, hatred, impatience and discord of every kind. The thorough study of water therefore signifies the end of monopolies, the end of all domination in the truest sense of the word and the start of a Socialism arising from the development of individualism in its most perfect form."
viktor schauberger— Implosion Magazine, No. 6, p. 29 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it the Catholic and the Protestant, the Catholic and the Jew, the Catholic and the Freethinker, the Catholic and the Buddhist, the Catholic and the Mahometan will co- operate together? For, as we have said elsewhere, Socialism is neither Protestant nor Catholic,Christian norFreethinker,Buddhist,Mahometan, nor Jew; it isonly HUMAN.
james connolly— 1910 Labour, Nationality, and Religion.
It is fundamental to Socialism that we should liquidate the British Empire as soon as we can.
stafford cripps— Hull Daily Mail, 2 March, 1936.
We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries (...) The very essence of Socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems (...) Socialism and market economy are not incompatible (...) We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations.
Deng Xiaoping— Cited by António Caeiro in Pela China Dentro (translated), Dom Quixote, Lisboa, 2004.
Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology
michael foot— The Daily Herald, 1956.
I believe Socialism is the grandest theory ever presented, and I am sure it will someday rule the world. Then we will have attained the Millennium.… Then men will be content to work for the general welfare and share their riches with their neighbors.
— Andrew Carnegie in New York Times (1 January 1885) "A Millionaire Socialist"
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
— George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, Ch. 11.
We are convinced that liberty without Socialism is privilege, injustice; and that Socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.
mikhail bakunin— "Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism", presented by Bakunin as a Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, at the League's first congress held in Geneva (September 1867).
— Variant translation: We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.As quoted in The Political Philosophy of Bakunin : Scientific Anarchism (1953) edited by Grigori? Petrovich Maksimov, p. 269
There can be no justification to admit, in any way, the use of armed forced to intervene in the internal affairs of a WTO [Warsaw Treaty Organization] member country. The solving of domestic problems belongs exclusively to the Party and people of each country and any kind of interference can only do harm to the cause of Socialism, friendship and collaboration among the socialist countries.
nicolae ceauşescu— Commencement address at the Romanian Military Academy (14 August 1968), quoted in The Prague Spring (2010) by M. Mark Stolarik
Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to Socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.
friedrich hayek— p. xi (The Road to Serfdom (1944))
Democracy is the road to Socialism.
karl marx— Attributed to Marx in recent years, including in Communism (2007) by Tom Lansford, p. 48, but the earliest occurrence of this yet located is in The Communist Review (1952) by the Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 15, where it is used to characterize the Communist agenda.
Socialism destroys everywhere one thing - diversity. Everything is supposed to be best, and as we know, best things are always in shortage. I remind once more that for reds "best" is what they consider "best" for us, and not what we like.
janusz korwin-mikke— source: feuilleton Zsiad?e mleko, Angora nr 24, 1998
If the electrician who comes to mend my fuse blows it instead, so I should stop having electricity? I should cut off my light? Socialism is my light, can you understand that?
Arnold Wesker— Chicken Soup with Barley, Act 3 (1958)
— Reacting to the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.
I see the situation of man in the world of planetary technicity not as an inexitricable and inescapable destiny, but I see the task of thought precisely in this, that within its own limits it helps man as such achieve a satisfactory relationship to the essence of technicity. National Socialism did indeed go in this direction. Those people, however, were far too poorly equipped for thought to arrive at a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and has been underway for the past 300 years.
Martin Heidegger— Interview (23 September 1966), published posthumously in Der Spiegel (31 May 1976), as translated by William Richardson in Risk and Meaning, Nicolas Bouleau (translated by Dené Oglesby and Martin Crossley), ed. Springer, 2011 (ISBN 978-3-642-17646-3), page 102.
I have the feeling that this Moscow Pact will at some time or other exact vengeance upon National Socialism.
alfred rosenberg— Quoted in "The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership" - Page 171 - by Joachim C. Fest - History - 1999
It was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was. Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism . On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class.
— George Orwell, in his original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell : Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison
Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
— Karl Marx, The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
All thistime [San Francisco, from1955] Irealized we were involved as a community with a historical change of consciousness and some kind of cultural revolution? I thought it wasreally insomerespects a contest between further liberation or1984 authoritarianism, police state; that it was creeping police state or creeping Socialism- libertarianism.
Allen Ginsberg— 1984 Quoted in Gordon Ball (ed) Allen Ginsberg: Journals Mid- Fifties (1995),'Meditations on Record Keeping by Poet, Transcribed by Editor'.
In their day, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of Socialism was inseparably linked with their names.
kim jong-il— "Let us advance under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and the Juche Idea" (3 May 1983)
All of you, I am sure, have heard many cries about Government interference with business and about "creeping Socialism." I should like to remind the gentlemen who make these complaints that if events had been allowed to continue as they were going prior to March 4, 1933, most of them would have no businesses left for the Government or for anyone else to interfere with — and almost surely we would have Socialism in this country, real Socialism.
harry s. truman— Harry Truman in Detroit (14 May 1950), as recorded in Good Old Harry.
The factory workers say that it’s impossible to do anything right. If you arrive five minutes early you are a saboteur; if you arrive five minutes late you are betraying Socialism; if you arrive on time they say, "Where did you get the watch?"
len deighton— Funeral in Berlin (1964; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966) pp. 144-5Described there as a joke current in 1960s Czechoslovakia
I take a much more pragmatic view than many people on the Left about working with Neil Kinnock. Kinnock represents the best vehicle possible for achieving Socialism now.
Ken Livingstone— Ham and High (21 February, 1986)
I hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party...this is not Socialism. It is Bolshevism run mad.
snowden, philip, 1st viscount snowden— BBC radio broadcast (17 October, 1931).
One difference between libertarianism and Socialism is that a socialist society can't tolerate groups of people practicing freedom, but a libertarian society can comfortably allow people to choose voluntary Socialism. If a group of people even a very large group wanted to purchase land and own it in common, they would be free to do so. The libertarian legal order would require only that no one be coerced into joining or giving up his property.
— David D. Boaz, in "The Coming Libertarian Age" in Cato Policy Report (January/February 1997)
When external and internal forces hostile to the development of Socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of Socialism in that country … this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.
— Speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (12 November 1968), quoted in The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy (2003) by Matthew J. Ouimet
