SOCIALISM QUOTES III

quotations about socialism

'87 socialism gave way to socialising
so put your hands up in the air
once more the North is rising

PULP

"Last Day of the Miners Strike"


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"


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


While it's clear that young people increasingly view socialism in a positive light, it's also clear that many of them are uneducated about what it entails, or the impact it's had throughout history.

CABOT PHILLIPS

"Students love socialism!... whatever that is", Campus Reform, July 16, 2017


The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society -- we are on the eve of universal change.

EUGENE V. DEBS

open letter to the American Railway Union, Chicago Railway Times, January 1, 1897

Tags: Eugene V. Debs


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


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

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Daily Telegraph, June 16, 1992


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


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


The socialist "revolutionaries" respond the way they always have: they try to save the revolution by exterminating political freedom.

ROBERT TRACINSKI

"Why Is The New York Times Trying To Rehabilitate Communism?", The Federalist, August 3, 2017


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


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

GEORGE ORWELL

The Road to Wigan Pier

Tags: George Orwell


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

SAKI

The Unbearable Bassington


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 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


All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

BIBLE

Acts 2:44-45

Tags: Bible quotes


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


For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

"The Case for Socialism", In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

Tags: Bertrand Russell


Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

THOMAS MANN

New York Times, June 18, 1950

Tags: Thomas Mann


We can't ignore socialism's loss of innocence over the past century. We may reject the version of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as crazed demons and choose to see them as well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis, but we must work out how to avoid their failures.

BHASKAR SUNKARA

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