SOCIALISM QUOTES

quotations about socialism

Socialism quote

There is no other limit to the size of the Socialist party than the number of workers and wage-earners.

LEON BLUM

speech at the Socialist Party Congress at Tours, 27 December 1920


Socialism is like Neil Diamond music. It's not good and belongs in the past, yet there's a group of people who think that it will eventually catch on if only they keep playing it.

JEFFREY EVAN BROOKS

attributed, "Socialism: The Next Social Revolution", Alternate History Discussion Board, October 12, 2013


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

SALLY WENTWORTH

Summer Fire


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


Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

RONALD WRIGHT

America & Americans


Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean--power over people, power to the State.

MARGARET THATCHER

speech to Conservative Central Council, March 15, 1986

Tags: Margaret Thatcher


Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN

Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman

Tags: Zygmunt Bauman


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

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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 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


The right still denounces socialism as an economic system that will lead to misery and privation, but with less emphasis on the political authoritarianism that often went hand in hand with socialism in power. This may be because elites today do not have democratic rights at the forefront of their minds -- perhaps because they know that the societies they run are hard to justify on those terms.

BHASKAR SUNKARA

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


We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA

official website


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


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


The socialist economy has become so strong, so vigorous that from the summits we have reached we can issue an open challenge of peaceful economic competition to the most powerful capitalist country--the United States of America.

NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV

concluding speech to twenty-second congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, October 27, 1961


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

GEORGE ORWELL

The Road to Wigan Pier

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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

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shall not covet," and "Thou shall not steal," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

JOHN ADAMS

A Defence of the Constitutions of Government

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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


This isn't new. Those who favor socialism always make the moral case for it. The truth is, maybe they actually believe in it, but in the real world, socialism harms, it weakens the economies of countries that have tried it. It just does. Weaker economies hurt everybody in them. Socialism kills incentive, opportunity, freedom. It is the opposite of what America is all about. Look, socialism always harms the people it claims to help the most. It handicaps them, leaving them weaker, less self-determined, less free. We should have this debate out in the open.

BOBBY JINDAL

The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2015