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Under Socialism, you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live, you would have to live well.

— George Bernard Shaw The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928)

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Socialism

More quotes by George Bernard Shaw

Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.

Getting Married (1908)

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

Saint Joan (1923)

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who havnt and dont.

The Apple Cart (1928)

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The Philanderer (1893)

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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: George Bernard Shaw (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.