Skip to content

Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than to submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. It is a strange part of the other America that one finds in the intellectual slums.

— Michael Harrington The Other America (1962)

Another quote →

More quotes by Michael Harrington

It is an intolerable irony that societies that are anything but socialist should thus define what socialism is in the eyes of so many. It is an irony that has to be undone.

Socialism: Past and Future (1989)

Life is lived in common, but not in community.

The Other America (1962)

Socialism, I want to propose, is the hope for human freedom and justice under the unprecedented conditions of life that humanity will face in the twenty-first century.

Socialism: Past and Future (1989)

If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery, in impoverishment.

The Other America (1962)

The rise of Communist states - dictatorship with centrally planned, nationalized economies - did more to distort and confuse the meaning of socialism than any other event in history.

Socialism: Past and Future (1989)

All Michael Harrington quotes →

Attribution

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