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If the State has no right to interfere to protect the poor struggling against circumstances over which they have no control in the industrial world, it is difficult to see why the same State should be considered a beneficent agency when called in to protect the property of the rich against an infuriated mob of starving people. If the poor are to be left to struggle for existence unaided by the State, then why not the rich?

— Keir Hardie

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More quotes by Keir Hardie

Socialism proposes to dethrone the brute-god Mammon and to lift humanity into its place.

“Their honesty,” said honest Keir Hardie, “is proverbial. They borrow and lend on word of mouth, and the repudiation of a debt is almost unknown.”

Socialism does not propose to abolish land or capital. Only a genius could have thought of this as an objection to Socialism. Socialism proposes to abolish capitalism and landlordism.

They of the Labour party were free-traders to a man.

No law can give freedom to a people which is dependent upon some power or authority outside themselves for the necessaries of life. The owners of the means of life can dictate the terms upon which all who are not owners are to be permitted to live.

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Attribution

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