Socialism Quotes
The names at the top make a strange group: Joseph Goebbels, Mussolini, Thatcher, Orwell and George Fitzhugh. Some come from the Nazi movement, which called itself socialist, and some from opponents. For reading, go to the sourced lines instead. H. L. Mencken, in A Little Book in C Major (1916), defines socialism as the theory that one man’s desire for what he hasn’t got is more pleasing to a just God than another’s desire to keep what he has. Solzhenitsyn, at Harvard in 1978, was blunter about it.
Three entries are flagged. “Democracy is the road to socialism,” credited to Karl Marx, is disputed. A line about no longer knowing what socialism is, credited to Deng Xiaoping, is marked misattributed, and the notes say it concerned the French Revolution and was actually said by Zhou Enlai. A claim that National Socialism is based on Marx is credited to Hitler and also marked misattributed.
There is only one hope for mankind — and that is democratic Socialism.
The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.
The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse.