quotations about socialism
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
GEORGE ORWELL
The Road to Wigan Pier
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.
BIBLE
Acts 2:44-45
'87 socialism gave way to socialising
so put your hands up in the air
once more the North is rising
PULP
"Last Day of the Miners Strike"
To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.
OSCAR WILDE
Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889
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
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labour... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
"Why Socialism?", Monthly Review, May 1949
Socialism is not feasible. It is a myth of dreamy minds. It has an idealistic atmosphere and is attractive to those who lag in the struggle of life. Its worst feature is that it deceives the people who conscientiously seek relief in it. Its leadership thrives because its impracticability prevents the experimental tests that would expose its sophistry.
JOHN CALHOUN TUTT
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
In seeking greater justice and equality in economic conditions, Socialism rests on a strong moral basis; but in seeking no more than greater material ease and comfort, it betrays the presence of mortality.
FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
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
If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.
VLADIMIR LENIN
speech at Peasant's Congress in Petrograd, November 27, 1917
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
I believe that for the past twenty years there has been a creeping socialism spreading in the United States.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
speech to Republican leaders in Custer State Park, South Dakota, June 11, 1953
By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
IAN MCEWAN
City Limits, May 27, 1983
A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.
TERRY EAGLETON
Ideology: An Introduction
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
The whole problem with Communism and Socialism is summed up in this old Polish proverb: "If I lie down , I get 1000 kopeks a month. If I stand up I get 1000 kopeks a month. Why stand up?"
REVELGEN
"A reply to Tiietso Makhele -- in reality, Socialism is a dead duck in SA", News24, August 10, 2017
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
Socialism accepts... the principles, which are the cornerstones of democracy, that authority to justify its title , must rest on consent; that power is tolerable only so far as it is accountable to the public; and that differences of character and capacity between human beings, however important on their own plane, are of minor importance when compared with the capital fact of their common humanity. Its object is to extend the application of those principles from the sphere of civil and political rights, where, at present, they are nominally recognized, to that of economic and social organization, where they are systematically and insolently defined.
R. H. TAWNEY
Equality
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
In essence, socialism is a system in which others are forced to pay your bills no matter how irresponsible you may be.
RICHARD W. RAHN
"The Insurance Compulsion", Washington Times, August 7, 2017