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And so I am not concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence but to enquire into the function of the violence of the working classes in contemporary socialism.

— Georges Sorel Reflections on Violence (1908)

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Socialism

More quotes by Georges Sorel

All the future of socialism resides in the autonomous development of workers’ syndicates.

Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive the desire to strike in the masses and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

We must not always attach too much importance to violent attacks on the bourgeoisie; they may be motivated by the desire to reform and to perfect capitalism.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

Everyone explains that discussions about Socialism are exceedingly obscure; this obscurity is due, to a large extent, to the fact that contemporary socialists use a terminology which no longer corresponds to their ideas.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions that abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State that should abolish capitalism.

Reflections on Violence (1908)

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Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill

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 and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated.

George Orwell

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Georges Sorel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.