quotations about socialism
Socialism is a world system or it is nothing. It cannot come into being by accretion, step by step, any more than a baby can be born with a leg on one day and then with an arm on another day. The fact that it is difficult for a new society to be born does not mean that there is an alternative, a lower-grade form, which must be accepted.
HILLEL TICKTIN
"The Problem is Market Socialism", Market Socialism: The Debate Among Socialists
I see no shame in putting my name
To socialism's cause
Nor seeking some more relevance
Than spotlight and applause
Neither in the name of conscience
Nor the name of charity
Money is put where mouths are
In the name of solidarity
BILLY BRAGG
"I Don't Need This Pressure Ron"
Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.
JOSE ANTONIO VIERA GALLO
foreword, Energy and Equity
The aim of socialism is no less than to effect a complete redesigning of our traditional morals, law, and language, and on this basis to stamp out the old order and the supposedly inexorable, unjustifiable conditions that prevent the institution of reason, fulfilment, true freedom, and justice. The most ambitious attempts to institute a socialist heaven on earth, however, have instead displayed the dynamic of producing hells on earth instead.
KELLEY L. ROSS
attributed, Capitalism, the Free Market, and the Duties of Property and Contract
All socialist structures I have ever encountered have toilets stemming from a single model engineered by the Orthodox Church in Tsarist Russia to ensure that man never be allowed to forget the corruption of the flesh.
ARTHUR MILLER
Salesman in Beijing
This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.
ALEXANDER HERZEN
"Epilogue 1849", From the Other Shore
It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.
JOHN STUART MILL
"The Principles of Political Economy"
It may be said of Socialism, therefore, that its friends recommended it as increasing equality, while its foes resisted it as decreasing liberty.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Eugenics and Other Evils
Socialism is the antithesis of Anarchy. One is the North Pole of Truth, the other the South.
ELBERT HUBBARD
"The Better Part"
True socialists should not place any obstacles in the way of capitalist evolution. For only the full maturity of capitalism could bring about socialism.
LUDWIG VON MISES
Planned Chaos
Temptation
Comrades
People of the world
We ain't got nothing to lose
Got them Bourgeoisie Blues
Mr. IV Lenin, Lenin of love
Gonna make us feel so fine, with a hit
Of socialism, in the mainline
ALABAMA 3
"Bourgeoisie Blues"
Now, you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce -- produce -- produce! That's what the country needs, and not all this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The Man Who Knew Coolidge