SOCIALISM QUOTES IV

quotations about socialism

What is a Socialist? That's when all are equal and all have property in common, there are no marriages, and everyone has any religion and laws he likes best. You are not old enough to understand that yet.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

The Brothers Karamazov

Tags: Fyodor Dostoevsky


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

Tags: Mikhail Bakunin


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


I believe that for the past twenty years there has been a creeping socialism spreading in the United States.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

speech to Republican leaders in Custer State Park, South Dakota, June 11, 1953

Tags: Dwight D. Eisenhower


As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

GEORGE ORWELL

The Road to Wigan Pier

Tags: George Orwell


To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

OSCAR WILDE

Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889

Tags: Oscar Wilde


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


The right still denounces socialism as an economic system that will lead to misery and privation, but with less emphasis on the political authoritarianism that often went hand in hand with socialism in power. This may be because elites today do not have democratic rights at the forefront of their minds -- perhaps because they know that the societies they run are hard to justify on those terms.

BHASKAR SUNKARA

"Socialism's Future May Be Its Past", New York Times, June 26, 2017


The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labour... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

"Why Socialism?", Monthly Review, May 1949

Tags: Albert Einstein


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

Tags: Oscar Wilde


Socialism is not feasible. It is a myth of dreamy minds. It has an idealistic atmosphere and is attractive to those who lag in the struggle of life. Its worst feature is that it deceives the people who conscientiously seek relief in it. Its leadership thrives because its impracticability prevents the experimental tests that would expose its sophistry.

JOHN CALHOUN TUTT

attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism


Socialism accepts... the principles, which are the cornerstones of democracy, that authority to justify its title , must rest on consent; that power is tolerable only so far as it is accountable to the public; and that differences of character and capacity between human beings, however important on their own plane, are of minor importance when compared with the capital fact of their common humanity. Its object is to extend the application of those principles from the sphere of civil and political rights, where, at present, they are nominally recognized, to that of economic and social organization, where they are systematically and insolently defined.

R. H. TAWNEY

Equality


In seeking greater justice and equality in economic conditions, Socialism rests on a strong moral basis; but in seeking no more than greater material ease and comfort, it betrays the presence of mortality.

FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER

attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism


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.

GEORGE ORWELL

preface to the Ukrainian edition, Animal Farm


If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.

VLADIMIR LENIN

speech at Peasant's Congress in Petrograd, November 27, 1917

Tags: Vladimir Lenin


I, who said forty years ago that we should have had Socialism already but for the Socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.

IAN MCEWAN

City Limits, May 27, 1983


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

Tags: G. K. Chesterton


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

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This isn't new. Those who favor socialism always make the moral case for it. The truth is, maybe they actually believe in it, but in the real world, socialism harms, it weakens the economies of countries that have tried it. It just does. Weaker economies hurt everybody in them. Socialism kills incentive, opportunity, freedom. It is the opposite of what America is all about. Look, socialism always harms the people it claims to help the most. It handicaps them, leaving them weaker, less self-determined, less free. We should have this debate out in the open.

BOBBY JINDAL

The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2015