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
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
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.
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
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.
Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism, and from it, extracted the meaning of Socialism. It also took from the cowardly, middle-class parties their nationalism.Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as crystal, the synthesis German National Socialism.
HermannWilhelm Goering— 1933 Speech, Berlin, 9 Apr.
Gentlemen, if ever a generation will come after us which is so weak and soft-hearted that it doesn't understand our task, then indeed the whole of National Socialism has been in vain. To the contrary, in my opinion one should bury bronze plates on which it is recorded that we have had the courage to carry out this great and so necessary work.
odilo globocnik— To Kurt Gerstein, 17 August 1942. Quoted in "God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust through the Centuries" - Page 101 - by Arthur Grenke - 2005
...what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brainslack brain workers, nor heartsick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realisation at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth.
william morris— Why I Am A Socialist (1884).
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
winston churchill— Speech in the House of Commons, October 22, 1945 "Demobilisation"
As there was a Socialism before Marx, so there will be one after him.
karl marx— Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1896) Karl Marx and the Close of His System
The rise of National Socialism is the protest of a people against a State that denies the right to work. If the machinery for distribution in the present economic system of the world is incapable of properly distributing the productive wealth of nations, then that system is false and must be altered. The important part of the present development is the anti-capitalist sentiment that is permeating our people.
gregor strasser— At the Reichstag (May 1934). Quoted in "The Mind and Face of Nazi Germany" - Page 165 - by Nagendranath Gangulee - National socialism - 1942
The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism , as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.
— George Orwell, in "Why I Write," Gangrel (Summer 1946)
In a recent interview, I was asked what, above all, I associated with Socialism inthismodernage.Ianswered that if there was one word I would use to identify modern Socialism, it was 'Science'.
— 1967 Speech,17 Jun.
If we made a mistake, then we made a mistake (I don't see it myself); after all, what's been missing in the European fight for Socialism over the last 100 years, is the element of 'madness'
gudrun ensslin— Letter to Baader in The element of madness. Perlentaucher Medien GmbH (July 12, 2009). Retrieved on Feburary 22, 2010.
What does greatness in the presidency mean? It means waging war, crushing liberties, imposing Socialism, issuing dictates, browbeating and ignoring Congress, appointing despotic judges, expanding the domestic and global empire, and generally trying his best to be an all-round enemy of freedom. It means saying with Lincoln, 'I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy.'
lew rockwell— 6 October 1996 "Down With the Presidency"
The controversy as to whether Socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible.
kenneth boulding— Boulding (1957) Segments of the economy, 1956, a symposium: the Fifth Economics-in-Action Program sponsored jointly by Republic Steel Corporation and Case Institute of Technology
We shall not achieve Socialism without a struggle. But we are ready to fight, we have started it and we shall finish it with the aid of the apparatus called the Soviets.
— Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars (24 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61
In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated. And so for the last ten years, I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement.
george orwell— Preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, as published in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell : As I please, 1943-1945 (1968)
For the West, the enemy was not "Socialism" but capitalism. How to tame and subdue the polar bear, how to take over the talent, the science, the technology, how to buy out the human capital, how to acquire the intellectual property rights?
— Chapter 16, The "Thirdworldization" of the Russian Federation, p. 240
You are afraid of life, Little Man, deadly afraid. You will murder it in the belief of doing it for the sake of "Socialism," or "the state," or "national honor," or "the glory of God."
— Wilhelm Reich, in Listen, Little Man! (1948)
