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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.

Random quote on Socialism

Most quoted on socialism:

The failure of capitalism is still much better than the success of socialism.

Garry Kasparov

The fundamental reason why Medicare is failing is why the Soviet Union failed; socialism doesn't work.

Rand Paul

All the future of socialism resides in the autonomous development of workers’ syndicates.

Georges Sorel

If production is at the root of capitalist exploitation, to change the mode of production would merely change the mode of exploitation.

Alfredo M. Bonanno Armed Joy (1977)

Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to Socialism or regression into Barbarism.

Rosa Luxemburg Junius Pamphlet (1916)

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

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

Keir Hardie

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

Oswald Spengler

The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life.

Bill Shankly

And so I am not concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence but to enquire into the function of the violence of the working classes in contemporary socialism.

Georges Sorel Reflections on Violence (1908)

No doubt, free enterprise is a harsh system; it demands real men. But socialism, which appeals to envious people craving for security and afraid to decide for themselves, impairs human dignity and crushes man utterly.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn The Roots of Anticapitalism (1972)

Slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism.

George Fitzhugh

‘Socialism’ is a 19th century idea with a 20th century history.

Tony Judt Ill Fares The Land (2010)

This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Socialism is the theory that the desire of one man to get something he hasn't got is more pleasing to a just God than the desire of some other man to keep what he has got.

H. L. Mencken A Little Book in C Major (1916)

[A] society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.

Milton Friedman

Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Harvard University address (1978)

A nationalized planned economy needs democracy, as the human body needs oxygen.

Leon Trotsky

Historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development.

Albert Einstein Why Socialism? (1949)

Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them.

Margaret Thatcher

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