quotations about socialism
I believe Socialism is the grandest theory ever presented, and I am sure it will someday rule the world. Then we will have attained the Millennium.... Then men will be content to work for the general welfare and share their riches with their neighbors.
ANDREW CARNAGIE
"A Millionaire Socialist", New York Times, January 1, 1885
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
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
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
We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system! And with my inclination to practical action it seems obvious to me that we have to put a better, more just, more moral system in its place, one which, as it were, has arms and legs and better arms and legs than the present one!
GREGOR STRASSER
"Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future", June 15, 1926
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
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 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
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
Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.
ÉMILE DURKHEIM
Le socialisme
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
Socialism provides safety in numbers. And that's OK, if you don't mind trading your name--your identity and individualism--for a number.
JAROD KINTZ
99 Cents for Some Nonsense
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech at the Scottish Unionist Conference, Perth, Scotland, May 28, 1948
We comes from God, I from the Devil.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Jealousy, which is an extraordinary source of crime in modern life, is an emotion closely bound up with our conceptions of property, and under Socialism and Individualism will die out. It is remarkable that in communistic tribes jealousy is entirely unknown.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Essays of Oscar Wilde
Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Essays of Oscar Wilde
The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man.
ERICH FROMM
On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying No to Power
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
EARL WARREN
Address to National Press Club in Washington DC, April 1953
Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.
JOSE ANTONIO VIERA GALLO
foreword, Energy and Equity
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