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With the exception of Yugoslavia, in numerous European countries—in the name of socialism—usurping bureaucracies that are cut off from the people (bureaucracies from which it is now proven that nothing can be expected) have achieved the pitiable wonder of transforming into a nightmare what humanity has for so long cherished as a dream: socialism.

— Aimé Césaire

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Socialism

More quotes by Aimé Césaire

My mouth shall be the mouth of those calamities that have no mouth, my voice the freedom of those who break down in the prison holes of despair.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939)

Weakness always has a thousand means and cowardice is all that keeps us from listing them.

Une Tempête (1969)

Every time you summon me it reminds me of a basic fact, the fact that you've stolen everything from me, even my identity!

Une Tempête (1969)

Beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939)

They tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, ... they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.

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