quotations about socialism
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
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City Limits, May 27, 1983
Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Daily Telegraph, June 16, 1992
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
I pass the test that says a man who isn't a socialist at 20 has no heart, and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.
WILLIAM CASEY
attributed, Washington Post, May 7, 1987
The basic problem I really have is that whenever I meet leftists in the socialist and Marxist movements, I'm called a petit-bourgeois individualist. I'm supposed to shrink after this. Usually I'm called petit-bourgeois individualist by students, and by academicians, who've never done a days work life [sic] in their entire biography, whereas I have spent years in factories and the trade unions, in foundries and auto plants. So after I have to swallow the word petit-bourgeois, I don't mind the word individualist at all!
MURRAY BOOKCHIN
attributed, Anarchism in America
Whether considered as a doctrine, or as an historical fact, or as a movement, socialism, if it really remains socialism, cannot be brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic church.... Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are expressions implying a contradiction in terms.
PIUS XI
Quadragesimo Anno
The whole problem with Communism and Socialism is summed up in this old Polish proverb: "If I lie down , I get 1000 kopeks a month. If I stand up I get 1000 kopeks a month. Why stand up?"
REVELGEN
"A reply to Tiietso Makhele -- in reality, Socialism is a dead duck in SA", News24, August 10, 2017
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
Real socialism is inside man. It wasn't born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can't say it is finished.
DARIO FO
London Times, April 6, 1992
A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.
TERRY EAGLETON
Ideology: An Introduction
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
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
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
EARL WARREN
Address to National Press Club in Washington DC, April 1953
Anyone who objects to any government whatsoever as a form of socialism ought not to pull that socialist lever in their home, the one that makes their waste disappear in a whirlpool into the socialized sewage treatment plant.
JOHN MÉDAILLE
The Distributist Review, August 31, 2009
Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're stillborn.
SAKI
The Unbearable Bassington
Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless.
KENNETH BAKER
London Observer, July 13, 1986
The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.
SIMONE WEIL
Oppression and Liberty
I am opposed to Socialism because I believe that it attempts to do by legislative enactment, what must come through an evolutionary process. I believe that we are now ready for a long evolutionary jump, but not so far forward as some of our Socialist brethren would like to jump. I desire to go as far toward human justice and good will toward men, as anyone, but I do not feel that we should start and stop, because we are not ready to go the whole distance. I would start and go but one day's journey at a time.
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
Here in Jacksonville there's a road called Commonwealth Blvd., and today as I was driving on it, I realized how socialist the name sounds.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book Has No Title
Democrat Socialism, like Nationalist Socialism, is nothing more than Marxist Socialism repackaged.
MARK ALEXANDER
"Tear Down the University of Virginia!", The Patriot Post, August 14, 2017