Quotes and Sayings about Socialism

"I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal."
- Roger Nash Baldwin
(Related: Control, Goal, Wealth, Class, Communism, Ownership, Property, Socialism, State)

"We aim in the domain of politics at republicanism; in the domain of economics at socialism; in the domain of what is today called religion, at atheism."
- August Bebel
(Related: Politics, Religion, Atheism, Economics, Socialism, Today)

"We can't afford to go down the dead end roads of Parliamentary Socialism or Fascistic Bolshevism."
- John Blair
(Related: End, Socialism)

"National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."
- Martin Bormann
(Related: Christianity, Socialism)

"The problem with K-12 education is socialism and the solution is capitalism."
- Peter Brimelow
(Related: Education, Capitalism, Socialism, Solution)

"Marxism conceives of the new system of socialism as the necessary outcome of all previous history made possible and necessary only by that previous history."
- Earl Browder
(Related: History, Marxism, Socialism)

"Socialism is nothing more nor less than the social, political and ideological system which breaks the fetters upon economic growth created under capitalism and opens the way to a new period of economic and social expansion on a much larger scale."
- Earl Browder
(Related: Growth, Capitalism, Nothing, Socialism)

"I must firmly adhere to the views I have held and practice, that Socialism to succeed must be practical, tolerant, cohesive and consciously compromising with Progressive forces running, if not so far, in parallel lines towards its own goal."
- John Burns
(Related: Goal, Practice, Running, Socialism, Succeed)

"I recognise that Socialism has ended its purely theoretical course, and that the hour to construct has come."
- John Burns
(Related: Socialism)

"Socialism is good when it comes to wages, but it tells me nothing when it comes to other questions in life that are more private and painful, for which I must seek answers elsewhere."
- Karel Capek
(Related: Life, Answers, Nothing, Questions, Socialism, Wages)

"And what always struck me about that war period was how even Churchill had to talk socialism to keep up people's morale."
- Barbara Castle
(Related: War, People, Socialism, Talk)

"They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?"
- Fidel Castro
(Related: Success, Failure, America, Capitalism, Socialism, Talk)

"I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism."
- Hugo Chavez
(Related: Capitalism, Socialism, World)

"The left is back, and it's the only path we have to get out of the spot to which the right has sunken us. Socialism builds and capitalism destroys."
- Hugo Chavez
(Related: Capitalism, Right, Socialism)

"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
(Related: Failure, Virtue, Envy, Ignorance, Misery, Philosophy, Sharing, Socialism)

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Virtue, Blessings, Capitalism, Sharing, Socialism, Vice)

"The first issue to be settled is whether socialism has a right to exist Are its allegations concerning the present system true? Is industry proceeding on a principle of fraud? I wish to test the power of recent economic theory to give an exact answer to this question."
- John Bates Clark
(Related: Power, First, Fraud, Present, Question, Right, Socialism, Theory)

"Socialism appeals to better classes and has far more strength. Attack the state and you excite feelings of loyalty even among the disaffected classes; but attack the industrial system and appeal to the state, and you may have loyalty in your favor."
- John Bates Clark
(Related: Feelings, Strength, Loyalty, May, Socialism, State)

"For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility."
- Jacques Delors
(Related: Liberty, Responsibility, Socialism, Solidarity)

"I can only say, think of me what you will, I have worked for thirty years in the Party, and my whole family has devoted everything to the affairs of the Party, the affairs of socialism."
- Alexander Dubcek
(Related: Family, Party, Socialism, Will, Years)

"There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure."
- Will Durant
(Related: Age, Money, Cure, Nothing, Socialism, Will)

"Marriage is socialism among two people."
- Barbara Ehrenreich
(Related: Marriage, People, Socialism)

"Socialism also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments."
- Havelock Ellis
(Related: Fact, Neglect, Socialism, Will)

"Real socialism is inside man. It wasn't born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can't say it is finished."
- Dario Fo
(Related: Italy, Man, Socialism)

"Socialism can only arrive by bicycle."
- Jose Antonio Viera Gallo
(Related: Socialism)

"More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: Life, Democracy, Socialism)

"The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: People, Civilization, Capitalism, Contradiction, Dawn, Invention, Socialism)

"To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size."
- John B. S. Haldane
(Related: Socialism)

"When I talked to my medical friends about the strange silence on this subject in American medical magazines and textbooks, I gained the impression that here was a subject tainted with Socialism or with feminine sentimentality for the poor."
- Alice Hamilton
(Related: Medical, Impression, American, Friends, Poor, Sentimentality, Silence, Socialism)

"The failure of Socialism since 1945 is that whilst encouraging us all, the creators of wealth, to produce less through strikes, it has caused us all to demand a higher level of our own product."
- Brian Harris
(Related: Encouraging, Failure, Wealth, Socialism)

"Neither an ox nor a donkey is able to stop the progress of socialism."
- Erich Honecker
(Related: Progress, Socialism)

"I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature."
- Sidney Hook
(Related: Aspirations, Capitalism, Literature, Socialism)

"In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy."
- David Horowitz
(Related: Society, Work, Economy, Ignorance, Practice, Psychology, Socialism)

"In the past 20 years and more since China embarked on the road of reform and opening up, we have moved steadfastly to promote political restructuring and vigorously build democratic politics under socialism."
- Jinato Hu
(Related: Politics, Past, Reform, Road, Socialism, Years)

"Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism."
- Hubert H. Humphrey
(Related: Compassion, Concern, Socialism, Weakness)

"The Jews are the enemy of National Socialism."
- Arthur Seyss Inquart
(Related: Enemy, Socialism)

"I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests - let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means."
- Janos Kadar
(Related: Ideas, Mankind, Party, Socialism)

"To pursue a so-called Third Way is foolish. We had our experience with this in the 1960s when we looked for a socialism with a human face. It did not work, and we must be explicit that we are not aiming for a more efficient version of a system that has failed."
- Vaclav Klaus
(Related: Experience, Work, Socialism)

"I can understand Communism, but not Socialism."
- Lajos Kossuth
(Related: Communism, Socialism)

"If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: People, Development, Socialism, Years)

"When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the "freedom of the press" goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: Time, Revolution, Now, Socialism)

"Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: Socialism, Will)

"The goal of socialism is communism."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: Goal, Communism, Socialism)

"Democracy is indispensable to socialism."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: Democracy, Socialism)

"Socialism is practical, in the best sense of the term; a living, vital force of inestimable value to society."
- Daniel De Leon
(Related: Society, Force, Living, Sense, Socialism, Value)

"But Socialism, alone, can bring self-determination of their peoples."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Self, Socialism)

"Capitalism is war; socialism is peace."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Peace, War, Capitalism, Socialism)

"International socialism recognizes the right of free independent nations, with equal rights."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Rights, Nations, Socialism)

"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level."
- Norman Mailer
(Related: Socialism, Suffering)

"And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read."
- Albert Maltz
(Related: Body, Fact, Freedom, Inspiring, Literature, Man, Socialism, Will)

"For us, Marxism is always open because there are always new xperiences, there are always new facts, including facts about the past, which have to be incorporated in the corpus of scientific socialism."
- Ernest Mandel
(Related: Facts, Marxism, Open, Past, Socialism)

"What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life."
- Thomas Mann
(Related: History, Life, Ideas)

"The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism."
- Karl Marx
(Related: Peace, Absence, Meaning, Opposition, Socialism)

"Democracy is the road to socialism."
- Karl Marx
(Related: Democracy, Road, Socialism)

"We modern Marxists regard socialism as a historically brief transitional stage between feudalism and capitalism, necessary only in backward countries."
- John McCarthy
(Related: Capitalism, Countries, Socialism)

"I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn't believe in the Parliamentary road to socialism."
- Ed Miliband
(Related: Dad, Road, Saying, Socialism)

"The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people."
- Slobodan Milosevic
(Related: People, Socialism)

"Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines."
- Dick Morris
(Related: Capitalism, Challenge, Debate, Democrats, Fight, Now, Republicans, Socialism)

"Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail."
- Benito Mussolini
(Related: Comedy, Fraud, Socialism)

"Socialism is... not only a way of life, but a certain scientific approach to social and economic problems."
- Jawaharlal Nehru
(Related: Life, Problems, Socialism)

"Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself."
- Jawaharlal Nehru
(Related: Democracy, End, Socialism)

"Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion."
- Richard John Neuhaus
(Related: Religion, People, Socialism)

"The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country."
- Lyn Nofziger
(Related: Government, People, Concern, Country, Expectation, Nothing, Reason, Socialism, Vote)

"Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades."
- Gary North
(Related: People, Communism, Man, Socialism)

"It's time to replace career politicians with citizen's politicians. It's time to elect people who are going to stand up to the Washington elite and stand up to a White House and Congress hell-bent on ramming socialism down our throat."
- Christine O'Donnell
(Related: Time, People, Career, Congress, Hell, Politicians, Socialism, Washington)

"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."
- George Orwell
(Related: Religion, Christian, Socialism)

"In my speeches, I always condemned communism, national-socialism and fascism."
- Jean-Marie Le Pen
(Related: Communism, Fascism)

"Socialism values equality more than liberty."
- Dennis Prager
(Related: Equality, Values, Liberty, Socialism)

"The mass of workers, as yet non-Socialist, is retarded in its development towards Socialism."
- Karl Radek
(Related: Development, Socialism, Workers)

"The enmity of such a party towards Socialism does not mean that the members are only prejudiced against it because they do not know it; it means that they are possessed of bourgeois ideas, and wish to determine their policy accordingly."
- Karl Radek
(Related: Policy, Ideas, Party, Socialism)

"Without Socialism the working class is a heterogeneous mixture of different categories, some of which have independent, varying interests, sometimes opposed to each other."
- Karl Radek
(Related: Class, Socialism)

"There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country."
- Herbert Read
(Related: People, Capitalism, Country, Marxism, Socialism)

"It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Society, Religion, Old, Russia, Socialism, Will, Years)

"We approach closer and closer to socialism."
- B. Carroll Reece
(Related: Socialism)

"As the egalitarianism of Marxism is attractive to many, socialism could have attracted many followers in America, anyway. But there is no doubt that it could not possibly have affected us so widely and so deeply as it has, had it not been heavily financed."
- B. Carroll Reece
(Related: America, Doubt, Followers, Marxism, Socialism)

"The slaves of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss."
- George Reisman
(Related: Loss, Property, Socialism)

"Socialism must come down from the brain and reach the heart."
- Jules Renard
(Related: Heart, Socialism)

"National Socialism stands or falls by its Weltanschauung."
- Alfred Rosenberg
(Related: Socialism)

"I have the feeling that this Moscow Pact will at some time or other exact vengeance upon National Socialism."
- Alfred Rosenberg
(Related: Time, Feeling, Socialism, Vengeance, Will)

"I think it's very clear that the American people are frustrated with this move toward socialism. And so whether you're back or white, if you believe that the conservative construct is in the best interest of our future, than you too would be voting with Republicans, and if you had the opportunity to run you'd join us as well."
- Tim Scott
(Related: People, Opportunity, American, Conservative, Future, Interest, Republicans, Socialism, Voting)

"Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Communism, English, Socialism)

"Now that the day of reckoning has arrived, they cry socialism!"
- Elizabeth A. Sherman
(Related: Day, Now)

"Socialism is undoubtedly in the throes of a crisis greater than at any time since 1917. The last half of 1989 saw the dramatic collapse of most of the communist party governments of Eastern Europe."
- Joe Slovo
(Related: Time, Crisis, Europe, Party, Socialism)

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
- Thomas Sowell
(Related: Failure, Socialism)

"All socialism involves slavery."
- Herbert Spencer
(Related: Slavery, Socialism)

"Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes."
- Oswald Spengler
(Related: Capitalism, Nothing, Socialism)

"Socialism? We've had way too much of it already."
- Steve Steckler
(Related: Socialism)

"The rise of National Socialism is the protest of a people against a State that denies the right to work."
- Gregor Strasser
(Related: Work, People, Protest, Right, Socialism, State)

"This old Germany was partly defeated in its conflict with the progressive ideas of socialism, for it had given the people nothing that could serve as a successful alternative to socialism."
- Gustav Stresemann
(Related: People, Successful, Ideas, Conflict, Germany, Nothing, Old, Socialism)

"Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity."
- William Howard Taft
(Related: Effort, Labor, Motive, Selfishness, Socialism, Today)

"It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism."
- Norman Tebbit
(Related: Death, Intellectuals, Right, Socialism)

"To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches."
- Margaret Thatcher
(Related: Cure, Disease, Socialism, Trying)

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
- Alexis de Tocqueville
(Related: Equality, Democracy, Liberty, Nothing, Restraint, Socialism, Word)

"The working class will not halt until socialism has been realized."
- Ernst Toller
(Related: Class, Socialism, Will)

"Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Society, Discovery, Socialism)

"The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Thought, Authority, Liberty, Names, Principles, Schools, Socialism, State)

"Almost the only persons who may be said to comprehend even approximately the significance, principles, and purposes of Socialism are the chief leaders of the extreme wings of the Socialistic forces, and perhaps a few of the money kings themselves."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Money, Extreme, Kings, Leaders, May, Principles, Socialism)

"First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Men, Government, Choice, Doctrine, First, May, Socialism, State)

"For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: May, Reason, Rome, Socialism, State)

"Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism."
- Earl Warren
(Related: Government, People, Progress, Socialism)

"The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Society, Hope, Labor, Socialism, Today)

"Is Medicare socialism? You want to get rid of Medicare. And a lot of the people against health care do. I want to preserve it and grow it."
- Anthony Weiner
(Related: Health, People, Care, Socialism, Want)

"The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?"
- H. G. Wells
(Related: America, Americans, Socialism, Word)

"No one should suffer from the great delusion that any form of communism or socialism which promotes the dictatorship of the few instead of the initiative of the millions can produce a happier or more prosperous society."
- Charles E. Wilson
(Related: Society, Communism, Delusion, Dictatorship, Socialism)

"We are redefining and we are restating our socialism in terms of the scientific revolution."
- Harold Wilson
(Related: Revolution, Socialism)

"Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious."
- Deng Xiaoping
(Related: Poverty, Socialism)

"The 19th century was the age of Individualism; the 20th and 21st are the ages of Socialism."
- Francis Parker Yockey
(Related: Age, Individualism, Socialism)

"Liberal democracy - as you know, in the old days, we were saying we want socialism with a human face. Today's left effectively offers global capitalism with a human face, more tolerance, more rights and so on. So the question is, is this enough or not? Here I remain a Marxist: I think not."
- Slavoj Zizek
(Related: Capitalism, Democracy, Rights, Liberal, Old, Question, Saying, Socialism, Today, Tolerance, Want)

"What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene, there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so on. I'm a little bit more of a pessimist there. I think that the Soviets - it's a very sad lesson - by their intervention, saved the myth."
- Slavoj Zizek
(Related: Disguise, Myth, Socialism)