Quotes About Socialism

Like most terms of political discourse, socialism has more or less, lost its meaning. Socialism used to mean something. If you go back far enough it meant basically control of production by producers, elimination of wage labor, democratization of all spheres of life; production, commerce, education, media, workers control of factories, community control of communities, and so on. That was socialism once. But it hasn't meant that for a hundred years. Socialism meant something different.

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

To me there can be no liberation without socialism. And conversely, there can be no socialism without liberation for everybody.

To the masses, the catchwords of Socialism sound so enticing... so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up.

The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?

Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism.

Socialism is, among other things, the political habitat of low self-esteem, incompetence, self-loathing, and a willingness to steal - or have stolen for you what you are unable or unwilling to work for. Socialism is a philosophy fit only for slugs, leaches, and mosquitoes.

You must have, if socialism was to succeed, a socialism with lots of democratic elements in it.

The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.

The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.

Socialism isn't just a list of economic prescriptions for government. Perhaps above all, socialism is a moral view.

It doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?

Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism

Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.

I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience.

The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity, is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.

[C]apitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich.

The great sin was adopting the 21st Century's Socialism, something that not even its founder, Ditrich knows exactly what it is, though he says it is under construction.

We, in Africa, have no more need of being 'converted' to socialism than we have of being 'taught' democracy. Both are rooted in our past -- in the traditional society which produced us.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine.

We have among us a class of mammon worshippers, whose one test of conservatism, or radicalism, is the attitude one takes with respect to accumulated wealth. Whatever tends to preserve the wealth of the wealthy is called conservatism, and whatever favors anything else, no matter what, they call socialism.

The real issue behind these people who are gun grabbers, the truth is - based on fact - the reason why is, they want control. They want control of the people. That's what socialism is and communism.

[A]nti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.

Modern American liberalism is nothing but the socialism too stupid to recognize itself in the mirror.

So the political choice today is much like the 1930s, when the global economy also broke down. The choice is between nationalism and populism on the right, or socialism reviving what used to be left-wing politics.

Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notion of freedom.

Socialists don't like ordinary people choosing, for they might not choose Socialism.

I find that socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons.

Always moved by religious motives, the Church has condemned the various forms of Marxist Socialism; and she condemns them today, because it is her permanent right and duty to safeguard men from currents of thought and influence that jeopardize their eternal salvation.

When 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.

I would like to suggest to you that the extent to which government in America has departed from the original design of in habiting the destructive actions of man and invoking a common justice; the extent to which government has invaded the productive and creative areas; the extent to which the government in this country has assumed the responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of our people is a measure of the extent to which socialism has developed here in this land of ours.

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.

The reason socialism has failed around the world every time it's been tried is because people in socialist countries have looked at the United States and have said if they can have it that good, we can. It's a failed, flawed ideology, but if you ask socialists why it's always failed, it's because the United States has stood in the way.

Of course, socialism is just evil now. It's completely discredited supposedly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can't help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to Communist China now which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are.

Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.

On the issue past of independence of Germany, after the time of National Socialism, Germany has been given an enormous amount of help particularly and also from the United States of America. A fact that we were able to enjoy German unification is due first and foremost to the help of the United States of America.

Socialism is simply a re-assertion of that tribal ethics whose gradual weakening had made an approach to the Great Society possible.

Socialism is practical, in the best sense of the term; a living, vital force of inestimable value to society.

The factory workers say that it's impossible to do anything right. If you arrive five minutes early you are a saboteur; if you arrive five minutes late you are betraying socialism; if you arrive on time they say, Where did you get the watch?

Obamanomics, his imposition of European-style socialism is not working for African-Americans. It is not working for Latinos and African-Americans.

The final goal of world revolution is not socialism, or even communism, it is not a change in the present economic system, it is not the destruction of civilization in a material sense. The revolution desired by the leaders is moral and spiritual, it is an anarchy of ideas in which all the bases established nineteen centuries ago shall be overthrown, all the honored traditions trodden under foot, and, above all, the Christian ideal finally obliterated.

Socialism crushes human rights, builds the state, impinges on the liberty of conscience, and breeds social, cultural, and economic degeneration.

I don't really think there have been transitional periods to socialism. There have been efforts, but they have usually been destroyed by a combination of external force and internal corruption.

A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion.

I think socialism is really about recognizing that there are limits to what the market can do. The market is very useful; at times it works very well, but it doesn't always work.

All socialism involves slavery.

The real division in the world today is not between socialism and capitalism, it's between freedom and totalitarianism.

Here's the trick, just as Marxists use the disparity, economic disparity among people to lure them into believing and supporting socialism to get rid of the disparity, the unfairness, the inequality, if the left can convince voters that fighting global warming is tantamount to saving lives, then they position everybody as heroes. And if you listen carefully, you'll note every leftist cause involves saving lives and involves Republicans and conservatives killing people!