SOCIALISM QUOTES V

quotations about socialism

Socialism is in a way the shadow of capitalism. Nothing guarantees the future of socialism so much as capitalism, because socialism is capitalism's self-criticism.

RICHARD WOLFF

interview, Fox Business, August 2017


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


Tell me this, if socialism actually is implemented, what do you expect to get, what is going to happen, are you going to get money, a house, a car, what do you hope for? Or are you simply hoping that the rich will be brought down to the level of the poor?

NO OHNO

"A Reply to: Capitalism has failed the world: Socialism is the viable alternative", News24, August 10, 2017


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

Tags: Simone Weil


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


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, 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


It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

The Perennial Philosophy

Tags: Aldous Huxley


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


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


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


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


Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

Popular Government

Tags: William Howard Taft


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


Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling.

OSCAR WILDE

"The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Essays of Oscar Wilde


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


It wasn't idealism that made me, from the beginning, want a more secure and rational society. It was an intellectual judgement, to which I still hold. When I was young its name was socialism. We can be deflected by names. But the need was absolute, and is still absolute.

RAYMOND WILLIAMS

Loyalties

Tags: Raymond Williams


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


I think it's wrong that only one percent of the people should own ninety percent of the country.

SALLY WENTWORTH

Summer Fire


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

SAKI

The Unbearable Bassington