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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:

Socialism is not the invention of an individual. It is essentially the outcome of economic and social conditions. The evils that Capitalism brings differ in intensity in different countries, but, the root cause of the trouble once discerned, the remedy is seen to be the same by thoughtful men and women. The cause is the private ownership of the means of life; the remedy is public ownership.

Clement Attlee

Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Republicanism, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing.

Leonard E. Read Elements of Libertarian Leadership (1962)

Unquestionably, Bolshevism has ruined the economic life of Russia... For our part, we declare war on socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism.

Benito Mussolini

Cooperation with women from socialist countries helped us a lot. For example with scholarships for study or reciprocal visits, and sometimes they paid for us to take part in conferences.

Lily Monze

Merely pointing to the fact that some people have a lot more than others is less compelling as a critique; it invites the response “So what? Those who have more aren’t hurting anybody; you’re just appealing to envy.” By contrast, being able to show that those who enjoy a higher socioeconomic status have to a considerable extent achieved and maintained that status by forcibly expropriating and oppressing the less affluent provides for a far more effective indictment.

Roderick Long Left-libertarianism, market anarchism, class conflict and historical theories of distributive justice (2012)

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people—like themselves—need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

Thomas Sowell

Marxism is not only the theory of Socialism, but also an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx’s proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism.

Joseph Stalin Works (1952)

Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — and not government coercion, domination and control.

Donald Trump

Only in a socialist system are the interests of the individual, the state and the collective at one. That is why only a socialist constitution can encourage the citizens to fulfill enthusiastically their duties to the society and the fatherland.

Ho Chí Minh

We can now reintroduce genuine socialism to a world feeling the sickness of capitalism-its nationalist hatreds, its perpetual warfare, riches for a small number of people in a small number of countries, and hunger, homelessness, insecurity for everyone else.

Howard Zinn

I certainly embrace socialism. I can’t see any other solutions. This country (the United States) could feed the world if it wanted to.

Enriqueta Vasquez Enriqueta Vasquez and the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (2006)

The Idiots of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss... Under communism (socialism), there is no incentive to supply people with anything they need or want, including safety.

George Reisman Capitalism : A Treatise on Economics (1996)

Nature gave all things in common for the use of all; usurpation created private rights. Property hath no rights. The earth is the Lord's, and we are his offspring. The pagans hold earth as property. They do blaspheme God.

Ambrose The Cry for Justice (1915)

Do not believe, even for a moment, that by stripping me of my membership card you do the same to my Socialist beliefs, nor that you would restrain me of continuing to work in favor of Socialism and of the Revolution.

Benito Mussolini

Socialism has taught many people that they possess claims irrespective of performance, irrespective of participation. In the light of the morals that produced the extended order of civilisation, socialists in fact incite people to break the law.

Friedrich Hayek The Fatal Conceit (1988)

Socialists take over from bourgeois capitalist society its materialism, its atheism, its cheap prophets, its hostility against the spirit and all spiritual life, its restless striving for success and amusement, its personal selfishness, its incapacity for interior recollection.

Nikolai Berdyaev The End of Our Time (1919)

Socialism as a universal mode of production is impracticable because it is impossible to make economic calculations within a socialist system. The choice for mankind is not between two economic systems. It is between capitalism and chaos.

Ludwig von Mises

Wealth in modern societies is distributed according to opportunity; and while opportunity depends partly upon talent and energy, it depends still more upon birth, social position, access to education and inherited wealth; in a word, upon property.

R. H. Tawney The Acquisitive Society (1920)

The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat.

Noam Chomsky

What is Socialism? There are a hundred definitions of Socialism and a thousand sects of Socialists. Essentially Socialism is no more and no less than a criticism of the idea of property in the light of the public good.

H. G. Wells

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