quotations about communism
Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term of social development--the thesis; property, the reverse of communism, is the second term--the antithesis. When we have discovered the third term, the synthesis, we shall have the required solution.
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON
What Is Property
Some propose mere welfare measures -- while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Principles of Communism
If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.
ERIC HOFFER
The True Believer
All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Principles of Communism
Communism is a doctrine bred of poverty, hatred and strife. Its spread can only be arrested by diminishing the area of poverty and hatred.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Portraits From Memory And Other Essays
The difference between capitalism and communism is that: the first seeing a rich man say all men should have as much, and the second seeing a rich man say no man should have as much.
PHELPS ADAMS
attributed, Thoughts for Meaningful Life
Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. The industrial civilization of the Western world has no intent to destroy man's freedom or to deny his personality. But Communism does. Denying God, it reduces man to a robot.
FULTON J. SHEEN
Life Is Worth Living
The walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome stride toward the longed-for millennium.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
The American Indians were Communists. They were. Every anthropologist will tell you they were Communists. No rich, no poor. If somebody needed something the community chipped in.
PETE SEEGER
attributed, Refuse to Stand Silently By
In Russia, all you have to do to get a house is to be born in the Soviet Union. You are entitled to housing. In America, if you don't have a dollar you have a right to choose between sleeping in a house or on the pavement. Yet you say we are the slave to communism.
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
The Kitchen Debate, July 25, 1959
We have a tendency to take our free-market system as a given, to assume that it flows naturally from the laws of supply and demand and Adam Smith's invisible hand. And from this assumption, it's not much of a leap to assume that any government intrusion into the magical workings of the market--whether through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, tariffs, labor protections, or spending entitlements--necessarily undermines private enterprise and inhibits economic growth. The bankruptcy of communism and socialism as alternative means of economic organization has only reinforced this assumption. In our standard economic textbooks and in our modern political debates, laissez-faire is the default rule; anyone who would challenge it swims against the prevailing tide.
BARACK OBAMA
The Audacity of Hope
I'm more and more convinced it's only through communism that we can become human.
FRIDA KAHLO
attributed, "Frida Kahlo retrospective in Berlin", World Socialist Web Site, September 11, 2010
Communism--or association in a simple form--is the necessary object and original aspiration of the social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilization. In this state of society--which the jurists have called negative communism--man draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism--negative as long as man does not produce--tends to become positive and organic through the development of labor and industry. But it is then that the sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of society, communism is the first species of slavery.
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON
What Is Property?
I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world's goods. But blow for blow I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world's happiness.
CHARLES EDWARD COUGHLIN
Sermons and Sunday Evening Radio Addresses
The horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things -- they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
"Six Questions for Slavoj Zizek", Harper's Magazine, Nov. 11, 2011
You are an advocate of capitalism, I am an advocate of communism! So let's compete!
NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
The Kitchen Debate, July 25, 1959
What is Communism? It is that when you have eaten enough food for your hunger and still food is left -- it belongs to another man.
AR Murugadoss
Kaththi
Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
MAO ZEDONG
attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
World Communism is like a malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue.
GEORGE KENNAN
attributed, Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan
If property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON
What Is Property?