Quotes about socialism
page 21

Frank Chodorov photo
Buckminster Fuller photo

“Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), The Wellspring of Reality

“I was attracted to studies of cancer families because epidemiological studies show that virtually all cancers manifest a tendency to aggregate in families. Close relatives of a cancer patient are at increased risk of that neoplasm, and perhaps other forms of cancer. The excess site-specific cancer risk is exceptionally high for carriers of certain cancer genes, in whom the attack rate can approach 100 percent. In candidate cancer families, the possibility that clustering is on the basis of chance must be excluded through epidemiological studies that establish the presence of an excess cancer risk. Predisposed families are candidates for laboratory studies to identify the inherited susceptibility factors. These investigations have led to the identification and isolation of human cancer genes, the tumor suppressor genes. These cancer genes are among more than 200 single-gene traits associated with the development of cancer. Approximately a dozen inherited susceptibility genes have been definitively identified, and many more are being sought. From studies of retinoblastoma and other rare cancers, important new information was generated about the fundamental biology of cancers that arise in many patients. Isolation of an inherited cancer susceptibility gene provides opportunities for presymptomatic testing of at-risk relatives. However, testing of healthy individuals also raise important issues regarding informed consent, confidentiality and potential for adverse psychological, social and economic effects.”

Frederick Pei Li (1940–2015) American physician

Frederick Li - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/frederick-li/.

Jerry Falwell photo

“This is probably as bad a day as the court has had on social issues since Roe v. Wade.”

Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) American evangelical pastor, televangelist, and conservative political commentator

On the US Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence V. Texas regarding sodomy laws, as quoted in "Conservatives condemn 'error of biblical proportions'" in The San Francisco Chronicle (27 June 2003) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/27/MN131241.DTL

Steve Keen photo

“Economics is not the Emperor of the social sciences, but the Humpty Dumpty.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 3, The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing, p. 83

Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden photo
Harry Truman photo

“We should give priority to legislation concerning social security.”

Raid Jahid Fahmi (1950) Iraqi politician

Interview with Al Jazeera (25 May 2018)

S. I. Hayakawa photo
Cora L. V. Scott photo
Milton Friedman photo

“As liberals, we take freedom of the individual, or perhaps the family, as our ultimate goal in judging social arrangements. Freedom as a value in this sense has to do with the interrelations among people”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12

Ian Hacking photo
Vincent Gallo photo
Peter L. Berger photo
Justina Robson photo
Leo Igwe photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
John Gray photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“My use of social media is not Presidential - it's MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Tweet published by @realdonaldtrump https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/881281755017355264 (1 July 2017)
2010s, 2017, July

Branch Rickey photo
Edward O. Wilson photo
Milton Friedman photo

“Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits."”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in Michael H. Prosser, K. S. Sitaram (1999) Civic Discourse: Intercultural, International, and Global Media. p. 11
1990s and attributed

Ernest Dimnet photo

“Social intercourse, with its … hypocrisy … is highly productive of thought-hindering insincerity.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: The Art of Thinking (1928), p. 60 as cited in: Irene Taviss Thomson (2000) In Conflict No Longer. p. 34

Terry Eagleton photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Fred Polak photo
Arthur James Balfour photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Justin Welby photo
Camille Paglia photo
Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo

“We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Address to Civil, Naval, Military and Air Force Officers of Pakistan Government, Karachi (11 October 1947)

Jon Cruddas photo
Terence McKenna photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo

“Socialism cannot conquer nor redeem the world if it ceases to believe upon itself alone.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan photo

“There is a trouble called Twitter, the finest lies are here. Nowadays, social media is actually the headache of societies.”

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

As quoted in "Erdoğan: Twitter denilen bir bela var" http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25446690/, NTV (June 2, 2013)

Adolf Hitler photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Joel Bakan photo

“The corporation is not an independent "person" with its own rights, needs, and desires that regulators must respect. It is a state created tool for advancing social and economic policy.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 6, Reckoning, p. 158

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
George Steiner photo
Irving Kristol photo

“The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995)
1990s

Edward Bellamy photo
Choi Jang-jip photo

“Democracy has failed to dampen the right/left ideological schism, which is historically rooted in the early years of separate state creation. And neither the right nor the left is fully able to provide a convincing alternative vision of how democracy in Korean society can robustly develop and thereby enhance its quality. The rightists/conservatives, who continue to retain their predominant power and influence over the state and civil society, still cling to an old-fashioned, outmoded black-and-white ideology derived from the Cold War period. That ideology can no longer provide a political vision and values and norms pertinent to the post-Cold War era as well as a democratized, highly modernized and globalized social environment. Thereby they have failed to play a leading role in enhancing autonomy of civil society vis-à-vis the state, respecting rule of law, and contributing to bringing social integration and inclusiveness.
On the other hand, the leftists have disappointed many people who expected that the entirely new generations which appeared on the political center stage in the course of democratization could play a decisive role in changing Korean politics. In recent years we have witnessed a growing disillusionment with the radical discourses and ideas as well as with their inability to develop a new type of party politics, deal with the socio-economic problems and provide a certain substantive model for ethical life.”

Choi Jang-jip (1943) South Korean political scientist

"The Fragility of Liberalism and its Political Consequences in Democratized Korea" (2009)

Adolf Hitler photo

“There is a difference between the theoretical knowledge of socialism and the practical life of socialism. People are not born socialists, but must first be taught how to become them.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

“German Volksgenossen!” Hitler’s opening speech at the new Winterhilfswerk, Deutschlandhalle, Berlin (October 5, 1937). Also quoted in The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh https://books.google.com/books?id=l5gcZpnL5QUC&pg=PA224
1930s

“[modern art is the story of certain peoples'] desire to get rid of what is dead in human experience, to get rid of concepts, whether aesthetic or metaphysical or ethical or social, that, being garbed in the costumes of the past, get in the way of their enjoyment.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Lecture at Mount Holyoke College, August 1944; later published as 'A Tour of the Sublime', in 'Tiger's Eye', 15 Dec. 1948; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory'
1940s

Max Weber photo
Émile Durkheim photo

“Opinion is steadily inclining towards making the division of labor an imperative rule of conduct, to present it as a duty. Those who shun it are not punished precise penalty fixed by law, it is true; but they are blamed. The time has passed when the perfect man was he who appeared interested in everything without attaching himself exclusively to anything, capable of tasting and understanding everything finding means to unite and condense in himself all that was most exquisite in civilization. … We want activity, instead of spreading itself over a large area, to concentrate and gain in intensity what it loses in extent. We distrust those excessively mobile talents that lend themselves equally to all uses, refusing to choose a special role and keep to it. We disapprove of those men whose unique care is to organize and develop all their faculties, but without making any definite use of them, and without sacrificing any of them, as if each man were sufficient unto himself, and constituted an independent world. It seems to us that this state of detachment and indetermination has something anti-social about it. The praiseworthy man of former times is only a dilettante to us, and we refuse to give dilettantism any moral value; we rather see perfection in the man seeking, not to be complete, but to produce; who has a restricted task, and devotes himself to it; who does his duty, accomplishes his work. “To perfect oneself,” said Secrétan, “is to learn one's role, to become capable of fulfilling one's function... The measure of our perfection is no longer found in our complacence with ourselves, in the applause of a crowd, or in the approving smile of an affected dilettantism, but in the sum of given services and in our capacity to give more.””

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

[Le principe de la morale, p. 189] … We no longer think that the exclusive duty of man is to realize in himself the qualities of man in general; but we believe he must have those pertaining to his function. … The categorical imperative of the moral conscience is assuming the following form: Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function.
Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), pp. 42-43.

C. Rajagopalachari photo
Ann Coulter photo

“Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Vegan computer geeks for Dean
2003-12-10
Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2003/12/11/vegan_computer_geeks_for_dean/page/full/
2003

“Ultimately, all addictions are the same. What distinguishes one from the other is only that some are visible and socially unacceptable, whereas others fall into cultural blind spots and get applauded. The latter are the addictions society seems to need in order to keep the system and economy going.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

The Personal Journey of Masculinity: From Externalization to Disconnection to Oblivion, pp. 27–28
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

V. P. Singh photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.”

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 95

Geert Wilders photo
Mark Manson photo

“Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable.
Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate and controllable.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 4, “The Value of Suffering” (p. 86)

Émile Durkheim photo
Arnold J. Toynbee photo
Norman Spinrad photo
Arthur F. Burns photo
Thomas Sowell photo

“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 (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

"Socialist or Fascist?" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell061212.php3#.XEZfbc2E6Mp, Jewish World Review (June 12, 2012)
2010s
Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.

Vladimir Lenin photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Norman Tebbit photo
Hugh Montefiore photo
A. James Gregor photo
Henry Adams photo
Gottfried Feder photo
Patrick Buchanan photo

“Like materialism, consumerism and socialism, transnationalism suffers from the same fatal flaw. It feeds the body and starves the soul. And eventually bored people hear the old calls again.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"The Specter Haunting Europe" http://buchanan.org/blog/specter-haunting-europe-6416 (May 23, 2014), Patrick J. Buchanan
2010s

Dorothy Thompson photo

“The Vatican newspaper in Rome, Osservatore Romano, said of National Socialism, ‘It is the most inhumane of all heresies. Hitler is true to his role of anti-Christ.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, p. 287 (newspaper column: “Spain and the Catholics,” January 27, 1939)

Kurt Schuschnigg photo
Alexis Bledel photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo