SOCIALISM QUOTES

quotations about socialism

Socialism quote

Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean--power over people, power to the State.

MARGARET THATCHER

speech to Conservative Central Council, March 15, 1986

Tags: Margaret Thatcher


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


Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're stillborn.

SAKI

The Unbearable Bassington


Socialism is like Neil Diamond music. It's not good and belongs in the past, yet there's a group of people who think that it will eventually catch on if only they keep playing it.

JEFFREY EVAN BROOKS

attributed, "Socialism: The Next Social Revolution", Alternate History Discussion Board, October 12, 2013


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


The ripeness of society for Socialism is not to be disproved by the number of wrecks and ruins which abound.

JOHN SPARGO

Elements of Socialism


In socialism of the future ... what counts is the whole, the community of the Volk. The individual and his life play only a subsidiary role. He can be sacrificed--he is prepared to sacrifice himself should the whole demand it.

ADOLF HITLER

attributed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant


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"


Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Daily Telegraph, June 16, 1992


I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.

KARL R. POPPER

Unended Quest


Socialism is a political vision of religious and moral import, whereas capitalism is a self-regulating system, deploying a means-end rationality. The two are in different orders of reality.

CHARLES DAVIS

"The End of Socialism?", After Socialism?: The Future of Radical Christianity


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


The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man.

ERICH FROMM

On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying No to Power

Tags: Erich Fromm


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


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


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


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 socialist pretends to have glimpsed paradise on earth. Those who decline the invitation to embrace the vision are not just ungrateful: they are traitors to the cause of human perfection. Dissent is therefore not mere disagreement but treachery. Treachery is properly met not with arguments but (as circumstances permit) the guillotine, the concentration camp, the purge.

ROGER KIMBALL

The New Criterion


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

Tags: Alexander Solzhenitsyn


Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

OSWALD SPENGLER

The Hour of Decision

Tags: Oswald Spengler