Quotes about communist
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Norman Tebbit photo
George Lincoln Rockwell photo
Rudolph Rummel photo
Richard Wurmbrand photo
Ingmar Bergman photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

George W. Bush photo
Jim Garrison photo
Mao Zedong photo
Jane Fonda photo
Rudolph Rummel photo

“Communists, when in control of a nation, have murdered more than 3.6 times the number of people killed in combat in all wars, including the two world wars.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 99

Ian Kershaw photo
Eric Hobsbawm photo

“Unlike the word 'communist', which always signified a programme, the word 'socialist' was primarily analytical and critical.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

How To Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism (2011)

Benjamin J. Davis Jr. photo

“In fact, the drive against the Communists is aimed, above all, against the labor movement.”

Benjamin J. Davis Jr. (1903–1964) American politician

"Why I am a Communist" (1947)

Herbert Morrison photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
John Gray photo
Ma Hongkui photo

“one of my soldiers can handle three Communist soldiers”

Ma Hongkui (1892–1970) Republic of China general

China on the eve of Communist takeover, A. Doak Barnett, 1968, Praeger, 194, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=kt0gAAAAIAAJ&q=ma+hung-k'uei&dq=ma+hung-k'uei&hl=en&ei=GqCqTJ3FD4GC8gb66-XXBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA,

Mao Zedong photo

“My closest friend and brother – this world is lucky to have a great personality as Kim Il Sung. This causes my boundless happiness. The fate of the world revolution and the international communist movement are on your shoulders, Comrade Kim Il Sung. I wish you long life and good health.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

As quoted by the Association for the Study of Songun Politics UK http://www.uk-songun.com/index.php?p=1_287_MAO-ZEDONG-SAID-COMRADE-KIM-IL-SUNG-SHOULD-LED-THE-INTERNATIONAL-COMMUNIST-MOVEMENT

Norodom Sihanouk photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Harold Wilson photo
Norman Thomas photo
Kent Hovind photo

“American capitalism has helped finance the communist take over of the world. Somebody is going to answer to God for this.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Friedrich Engels photo
Zbigniew Brzeziński photo
Nguyen Khanh photo
El Lissitsky photo
Dave Barry photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo
Emma Goldman photo
Andy Warhol photo
Rodion Malinovsky photo
Clement Attlee photo
Georges Clemenceau photo

“My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

On being told his son had joined the Communist Party, as quoted in Try and Stop Me (1944) by Bennet Cerf
A statement similar in theme has also been attributed to Clemenceau:
A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.
As quoted in "Nice Guys Finish Seventh" : False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations (1992) by Ralph Keyes.
W. Gurney Benham in A Book of Quotations (1948) cites a statement by François Guizot as the earliest known expression of this general idea, stating that Clemenceau merely adapted the saying substituting socialiste for republicain:
N'être pas républicain à vingt ans est preuve d'un manque de cœur ; l'être après trente ans est preuve d'un manque de tête.
Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.
Variations on this general idea have also been attributed or misattributed to many others, most commonly Winston Churchill, who is not known to have actually made any similar statement.
Post-Prime Ministerial

Woody Guthrie photo

“I ain't a communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

As quoted in "Woody Guthrie" by Steve Earle in The Nation (21 July 2003) http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030721&s=earle

Malcolm Muggeridge photo
Alan Charles Kors photo
Benjamin J. Davis Jr. photo
Leonid Brezhnev photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Adam Schaff photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo

“The Communists, following Hegel, speak of humanity and its future as of some monolithic individuality. I was attacking this illusion.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

On her work All Men are Mortal in Force of Circumstances (1963), p. 73
General sources

Enver Hoxha photo
Martin Niemöller photo

“In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done."”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177

Daniel Dennett photo

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Rudolph Rummel photo
Mao Zedong photo
Ranil Wickremesinghe photo
Alan Charles Kors photo
Henry Adams photo
Christopher Monckton photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“The real Italian anomaly is not Silvio Berlusconi but communist prosecutors and communist judges in Milan who have attacked him again and again since he entered politics.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

As quoted in "Silvio Berlusconi booed by audience after angry TV rant" in The Telegraph (29 October 2009) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6455488/Silvio-Berlusconi-booed-by-audience-after-angry-TV-rant.html
2009

Phillip Abbott Luce photo

“New Leftists are not buying the collectivist doctrine of the established (Communist) organizations. They are quite simply libertarians, rebelling against unreasonable power and authority, whether it comes via established government or totalitarian (leftist) organizations.”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Quoted in “Not All Protesters Part of Conspiracy,” Jerry R. Wilson, The Oklahoma Journal, August 7, 1972, speech by Phillip Abbott Luce in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Leszek Kolakowski photo
Clement Attlee photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“…the war between the Nazis and the Communists; the war of the non-God religions, waged with the weapons of the twentieth century. The most striking fact about the new religions was their similarity. They substituted the devil for God and hatred for love.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936) at a cross-party meeting organised by the League of Nations Union "in defence of freedom and peace", quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18
The 1930s

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Gancho Tsenov photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Licio Gelli photo

“We had Italy in our hands. We would never have wanted to attack, but we were like a sentinel, carefully ensuring that the Communist party should never emerge.”

Licio Gelli (1919–2015) Italian financier, liaison with Nazi Germany, P2 grandmaster, involved in many scandals

[Politi, James, Licio Gelli, fascist and masonic chief, https://www.ft.com/content/7d3fdd08-a418-11e5-8218-6b8ff73aae15, 16 August 2018, Financial Times, December 17, 2015]

Dorothy Thompson photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
William Empson photo

“Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death
Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The Communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Ignorance of Death" (1940), line 3; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 78.
The Complete Poems

Dorothy Day photo
James P. Cannon photo
Mao Zedong photo
Ernst Hanfstaengl photo
Christopher Monckton photo

“So at last the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement and took over Greenpeace so that my friends who founded it left within a year because they'd captured it. Now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world.”

Christopher Monckton (1952) British public speaker and hereditary peer

Monckton climate change video goes viral http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/16/monckton-climate-change-video-goes-viral/ wattsupwiththat.com, November 16, 2009.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“I am against the monopoly enjoyed by the BBC. For eleven years they kept me off the air. They prevented me from expressing views which have proved to be right. Their behaviour has been tyrannical. They are honeycombed with Socialists—probably with Communists.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Quoted in Charles Moran's diary entry (3 June 1952), quoted in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 416.
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Margaret Thatcher photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Howard Zinn photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
Mohan Bhagwat photo

“The world has tried fundamentalists, Communists and conservatives and has now turned to the Hindus to find solutions to the problems… Hindus should rise in unison and show the world leadership based on values.”

Mohan Bhagwat (1950) Indian activist

As quoted in " Time for Hindus to show leadership to the world: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/bhagwat-time-for-hindus-to-show-leadership-to-the-world/", The Indian Express (22 November 2014)
2011-2014

“I think, that it is our common duty from now on to stop Chinese penetration of the international Communist movement and in relation to Western powers to show China as the main present and future troublemaker.”

Ivan Agayants (1911–1968) KGB officer

Quoted in "The Deception Game: Czechoslovak Intelligence in Soviet Political Warfare" - by Ladislav Bittman - Political Science - 1972.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan photo

“You cannot place a mother breastfeeding her baby on an equal footing with men. You cannot make women work in the same jobs as men do, as in communist regimes. You cannot give them a shovel and tell them to do their work. This is against their delicate nature.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in "Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: ‘women not equal to men’" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/24/turkeys-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan-women-not-equal-men, The Guardian (November 24, 2014)

Richard Wurmbrand photo

“I have decided to denounce communism, though I love the Communists. I don't find it to be right to preach the gospel without denouncing communism.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Source: Tortured For Christ (1967), p. 75.

Theodore Dalrymple photo
Manuel Fraga Iribarne photo

“Legalisation of the Communist Party is a real coup d'état.”

Manuel Fraga Iribarne (1922–2012) Spanish politician

Frases que reflejan el recorrido de Manuel Fraga, 16th January 2012, Gara, 16th January 2012, castellà http://www.gara.net/azkenak/01/315809/es/Frases-que-reflejan-recorrido-Manuel-Fraga,
Transition to democracy

Fidel Castro photo

“Soon, I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without a truce to obtain them.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech after Raul was re-elected as head of the Communist party http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fidel-castro-gives-speech-saying-hes-nearing-the-end-of-his-life/