SOCIALISM QUOTES
quotations about socialism
To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.
OSCAR WILDE
Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889
The socialist economy has become so strong, so vigorous that from the summits we have reached we can issue an open challenge of peaceful economic competition to the most powerful capitalist country--the United States of America.
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
concluding speech to twenty-second congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, October 27, 1961
We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system! And with my inclination to practical action it seems obvious to me that we have to put a better, more just, more moral system in its place, one which, as it were, has arms and legs and better arms and legs than the present one!
GREGOR STRASSER
"Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future", June 15, 1926
In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
interview, St. Austin Review, February 2003
If Socialism is what its friends say it is, it should be commended; if it is what its enemies say it is, it should be condemned.
FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
Popular Government
We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
"Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom", September 1867
A little socialism
Don't scare me one bit!
We could do a whole lot worse
Than Europe or Canada.
LEN CHANDLER
"Which Side Are You On? (Civil Rights Version)"
I think it's wrong that only one percent of the people should own ninety percent of the country.
SALLY WENTWORTH
Summer Fire
As we know, socialism is calculational chaos. Rational appraisement and allocation are eternally elusive. It is a gigantic negative-sum game in which each player quickly grabs a piece of the pie, and all the while the pie shrinks before the players' eyes.
LARRY J. SECHREST
Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture at the Austrian Scholars Conference in Auburn, Alabama, "The Anti-Capitalists: Barbarians at the Gate", March 15, 2008
The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Essays of Oscar Wilde
In its early days, socialism was a revolutionary movement of which the object was the liberation of the wage-earning classes and the establishment of freedom and justice. The passage from capitalism to the new régime was to be sudden and violent: capitalists were to be expropriated without compensation, and their power was not to be replaced by any new authority. Gradually a change came over the spirit of socialism. In France, socialists became members of the government, and made and unmade parliamentary majorities. In Germany, social democracy grew so strong that it became impossible for it to resist the temptation to barter away some of its intransigeance in return for government recognition of its claims. In England, the Fabians taught the advantage of reform as against revolution, and of conciliatory bargaining as against irreconcilable antagonism. The method of gradual reform has many merits as compared to the method of revolution, and I have no wish to preach revolution. But gradual reform has certain dangers, to wit, the ownership or control of businesses hitherto in private hands, and by encouraging legislative interference for the benefit of various sections of the wage-earning classes. I think it is at least doubtful whether such measures do anything at all to contribute toward the ideals which inspired the early socialists and still inspire the great majority of those who advocate some form of socialism.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"Pitfalls of Socialism", Political Ideals
We comes from God, I from the Devil.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called socialism.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"To the Rural Poor", Collected Works
But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Alarms and Discursions
Socialism is a scareword they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
speech, October 10, 1952
To get rid of mosquitoes you must drain the pools on the lowlands, and to get rid of socialists you must drain off injustice from the slums.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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, "Demobilisation", October 22, 1945
Our governments told us that socialism was the real enemy, and that we would have freedom, but the foreign powers and corporations were the ones with real freedom, the freedom to take all the wealth generated by our work and our land and gave us only a small percentage of the scraps from the table. Their lust for power and their greed drove them to betray not only us but themselves and the word of their own God. (Open your eyes before you die.)
IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE
"Open Your Eyes"
For billions of people throughout the optimistically styled "developing world," socialism is a dreary reality. Such countries mostly adopted socialism before accruing capital for socialists to squander, and as a result, socialism has kept them in permanent impoverishment.
CHARLES SCALIGER
"The Fruits of Socialism", The New American, August 14, 2017