Popular quotes about Socialism! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its... Did I say socialism?
Fidel CastroWhether considered as a doctrine, or as an historical fact, or as a movemement, socialism, if it really remains socialism, cannotbe brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic church.... Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are expressions implying a contradiction in terms.
Pope Pius XIWe must ever keep in mind that collectivized socialism is part of the communist strategy. Communism is fundamentally socialism. We will never win our fight against communism by making concessions to socialism.
Ezra Taft BensonThe line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator.
John T. FlynnAnd the only forms of socialism in the world that were then getting results - malign ones, as it was - were the Fascist and Soviet republics. Fascism is a form of socialism - you rebuild the country, you find a scapegoat, and you go from there.
James EllroyIn 1949, I believed that social progress, the triumph of the proletariat, socialism would lead to the emancipation of women. But I saw that nothing came of it: first of all, that socialism was not achieved anywhere, and that in certain countries which called themselves socialist, the situation of women was no better than it was in so-called capitalist countries.
Simone de BeauvoirThere is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.
Ayn RandThis 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 HerzenFriedrich Hayek made the point that one of the keystones of socialism is the denial of individual responsibility. Thus, the crusade for socialism always included attacks on individual responsibility. For if individuals do not have free will, and are not responsible for their actions, then their lives must be controlled somehow - preferably by the state - according to the socialists. They must be regulated, regimented and controlled - for their own good.
Thomas DiLorenzoTo paraphrase Karl Marx, the great Karl Marx, a specter is haunting the streets of Copenhagen...Capitalism is the specter, almost nobody wants to mention it...Socialism, the other specter Karl Marx spoke about, which walks here too, rather it is like a counter-specter. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don't have the least doubt. Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world.
Hugo ChavezCapitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
Ludwig von MisesA traffic jam is a collision between free enterprise and socialism. Free enterprise produces automobiles faster than socialism can build roads and road capacity.
Andrew Joseph GalambosI tend to not use the word "socialist," because even though more young adults in the United States in a poll say they support socialism than do capitalism, the word socialism doesn't have a lot of meaning in this country.
Cynthia KauffmanThree hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain.
Friedrich EngelsFailure is a big part of a free market's success. People fail to live up to their potential, or to carry out all their good intentions, in all kinds of economic and political systems. Capitalism makes them pay a price for their failures, while socialism, feudalism, fascism and other systems enable personal failures, especially by those at the top, to be ignored.
Thomas SowellWhen one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the 'freedom of the press' goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.
Vladimir LeninThe 21st century will not be about the battle between capitalism and socialism but between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism.
Tony BlairWhen I was young, I was all about personal sovereignty and that junk, because there was no privacy and the available ideologies were collective, both socialism/communism and nationalism.
Aleksandar HemonCreativity is the foundation of wealth. All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of goods than a flow of ideas, the defining characteristic of which is surprise. If it were not surprising, we could plan it, and socialism would work.
George GilderSocialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists.
Friedrich August von HayekIt is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go....We are living in the end of the sovereign states....In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish....Countless people...will hate the new world order....and will die protesting against it.
H. G. WellsThat democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.
Friedrich August von HayekI think you hear, at least as an undertone, and it's going to grow louder, is that we believe that capitalism is the mantra of the day and anything that creeps towards socialism is a problem.
Tim ScottGovernment-to-government foreign aid promotes statism, centralized planning, socialism, dependence, pauperization, inefficiency, and waste. It prolongs the poverty it is designed to cure. Voluntary private investment in private enterprise, on the other hand, promotes capitalism, production, independence, and self-reliance.
Henry HazlittI don't have time to beat around the bush. The health-care plan as proposed by Mrs. Clinton is socialism. There's no soft way to peddle it. There is not other way to describe it.
Rush LimbaughWhen I talked to my medical friends about the strange silence on this subject in American medical magazines and textbooks, I gained the impression that here was a subject tainted with Socialism or with feminine sentimentality for the poor.
Alice Hamilton[The healthcare bill is a] headlong rush into socialism....we will not stand for the Obama-Pelosi-Reid hijacking of our freedom and democracy so they can impose their socialist 'utopia' of higher taxes, restricted access, inferior quality, and deadly inefficiency on the best health care system in the world....You and the RNC are all that stand between the Democrats' scheme to take more of your hard-earned income to pay for this unsustainable, freedom destroying entitlement and an opportunity to work for real, truly bipartisan step-by-step solutions.
Michael SteeleCarli Fiorina says companies are consolidating because it's the only way to compete with big, corrupt government. "This is how socialism starts." Is that also why she bought Compaq when she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard?
Kevin DrumCorrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.
Walter LippmannSome liberation theologians maintain that they are not influenced by Marxist philosophy at all. In this case it is necessary to discern whether they say this for tactical reasons, so as not to be compromised politically or whether they are really convinced that Marxism doesn't influence them in any way. I personally think that it is not possible to evade the influence of Marxism, as we cannot commit ourselves to the revolutionary struggle without drawing support from the conclusions of scientific socialism.
Ernesto CardenalSocialism is simply a re-assertion of that tribal ethics whose gradual weakening had made an approach to the Great Society possible.
Friedrich August von HayekFrom the viewpoint of economic democracy, the capitalism-socialism debate was a debate between private and state capitalism (i.e., the private or public employment system), and the debate was as misframed as would be a debate between the private or public ownership of slaves.
David P. EllermanIs it possible to fulfill this task, is it possible to achieve the definite victory of Socialism in one country without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is impossible.
Leon TrotskyWe've been at this 56 years and ... we love saying that we are a country in revolution, trying to create socialism, and we form part of a single party called the Communist Party.
Mariela CastroIn the last few decades we have seen the extraordinary rise of ecosocialist movements around the world inspired in large part by Marx's ecological critique of political economy. Marx was indeed influenced by some of the earliest attempts to develop what we now call an ecological-systems view, rooted in the concept of metabolism. Building on this perspective, Marx defined socialism as the rational regulation by the associated producers of the metabolism between society and nature in such a way as to conserve energy and to promote the satisfaction of human needs.
John Bellamy FosterI see the situation of man in the world of planetary technicity not as an inexitricable and inescapable destiny, but I see the task of thought precisely in this, that within its own limits it helps man as such achieve a satisfactory relationship to the essence of technicity. National Socialism did indeed go in this direction. Those people, however, were far too poorly equipped for thought to arrive at a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and has been underway for the past 300 years.
Martin HeideggerWe must reduce all the emissions that are destroying the planet. However, that requires a change in lifestyle, a change in the economic model: We must go from capitalism to socialism.
Hugo ChavezThe first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.
L. Neil SmithI am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people's psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn't interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life.
Che GuevaraThe biggest shortage in the world is not oil or foodยญ-it's leadership. Why is it such a scarce resource? Because egos get involved. Most people in top positions think they are better than somebody else, think they need something better than somebody else. It's economic assets, it's status, it's all those other things that prevent the people at the top from subordinating themselves totally to the people they lead. It is not socialism. Leaders get paid a lot more than those they lead, they get paid for their knowledge and skill...but they are no better as a person.
Bob Davids