“Socialism is humanity's second nature. All politicians do is turn human vice into votes.”

"A Search into the Nature of Society", p. 428
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Part of an endorsement statement for The Dying of the Trees (1997) by Charles E. Little http://www.ecobooks.com/books/dying.htm.

Quoted in Really Reading Gertrude Stein : A Selected Anthology with essays (1989) by Judy Grahn (Crossing Press ISBN 0-895-94380-8, p. 253

London: Pluto, 1996.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Powers and Prospects (1996)

Source: In This Our Life

Source: The God of Small Things

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

"My Six Conversions, § II : When the World Turned Back" in The Wells and the Shallows (1935)
Context: The Church never said that wrongs could not or should not be righted; or that commonwealths could not or should not be made happier; or that it was not worth while to help them in secular and material things; or that it is not a good thing if manners become milder, or comforts more common, or cruelties more rare. But she did say that we must not count on the certainty even of comforts becoming more common or cruelties more rare; as if this were an inevitable social trend towards a sinless humanity; instead of being as it was a mood of man, and perhaps a better mood, possibly to be followed by a worse one. We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things.

Preface to Atlanticus, Produktion und Konsum im Sozialstaat (Production and Consumption in the Social State or in the Welfare State; Stuttgart: Verlag J. H. W. Dietz Nachf, 1989), p. xiv.