Quotes about socialist (840 quotes, page 2)

“We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

People , Justice , Question

“Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded…by the mainstream Marxists… Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Speech on “Lenin, Trotsky and Socialism and the Soviet Union”, (March 15, 1989) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI
Quotes 1960s–1980s, 1980s

“If Goethe claimed towards the end of his life that every reasonable person is a moderate Liberal, then in our time one must say: Every reasonable person is a moderate Socialist.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

As quoted in The New York Times (18 June 1950); also in Thomas Mann: A Critical Study (1971) by R. J. Hollingdale, Ch. 2

Personality , Life , Time

“A capitalist regime is more likely to produce these narcissistic behaviours in its citizens compared to a socialist country.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Country

“Considering the optimistic turn taken by world trade AT THIS MOMENT…it is some consolation at least that the revolution has begun in Russia, for I regard the convocation of 'notables' to Petersburg as such a beginning. … [O]n the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Letter to Friedrich Engels (8 October 1858), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856–59 (2010), pp. 346–347

World

“A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: Ideology: An Introduction

People

“The circumstances of the camping trip are multiply special: many features distinguish it from the circumstances of life in a modern society. One may therefore not infer, from the fact that camping trips of the sort that I have described are feasible and desirable, that society-wide socialism is equally feasible and equally desirable. There are too many major differences between the contexts for that inference to carry any conviction. What we urgently need to know is precisely what are the differences that matter, and how can socialists address them? Because of its contrasts with life in the large, the camping trip model serves well as a reference point for purported demonstrations that socialism across society is not feasible and/or desirable, since it seems eminently feasible and desirable on the trip.”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

I. The Camping Trip
Why Not Socialism? (2009)

Life

“There comes a time in the life of every nation when it stands at the cross-roads of history and must choose which way to go. But for us there need be no difficulty or hesitation, no looking to right or left. Our way is straight and clear—the building up of a socialist democracy at home with freedom and prosperity for all, and the maintenance of world peace and friendship with all nations.”

Lal Bahadur Shastri (1904–1966) The second Prime Minister of the Republic of India and a leader of the Indian National Congress party

First broadcast as Prime Minister, on 11 June 1964 http://lbsim.ac.in/about-shastriji.aspx?mpgid=2&pgid1=10&pgidtrail=11

Life , Friendship , World , Peace

“Socialists have all too often failed to take ecological issues seriously enough. However, this is not a fault of socialists alone, as the fault applies even more to the liberal tradition taken as a whole. But whatever we choose to say about socialism in the twentieth century, it has to be emphasized that no one can be truly socialist and indeed Marxist in the twenty-first century and fail to acknowledge the full severity of the planetary ecological crisis. We are either at the forefront of the struggle to protect the earth as a place of human habitation (and as a home for innumerable species) or we are on the side of the system’s creative exterminism of the Earth system as we know it.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Home

“I love the BBC, it's a gorgeous organisation and it's just 'cos it's got vaguely socialist state-run tendencies that people like bloody old Rupert Murdoch coat it off in the Sun, and it's gotta stop!”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio 2 Show (2007–2008)

Love , People , Sun

“The Soviet Army, Air Force and Navy are strong enough to thwart any attempts of imperalist reaction to disrupt the peaceful labor of our people or the unity and solidarity of the socialist camp.”

Rodion Malinovsky (1898–1967) Soviet military commander and politician

Quoted in "Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument" - Page 93 - by Stephen S. Kaplan - Political Science - 1981

People , Peace , Strong

“When service is performed, the individual performing it is entitled to the compensation for it. His creation becomes a part of himself. It is his property. To attempt to deal with persons or with property in a communistic or socialistic way is to deny what seems to me to be this plain fact. Liberty and equality require that equal compensation shall be paid for equal service to the individual who performs it. Socialism and communism cannot be reconciled with the principles which our institutions represent. They are entirely foreign, entirely un-American. We stand wholly committed to the policy that what the individual produces belongs entirely to him to be used by him for the benefit of himself, to provide for his own family and to enable him to serve his fellow men.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Men , Family , Way , Communication

“I never believed, as many Marxists professed to do, that normative principles were irrelevant to the socialist movement, that, since the movement was of oppressed people fighting for their own liberation, there was no room or need for specifically moral inspiration in it. I thought no such thing partly for the plain reason that I observed enormous selfless dedication among the active communists who surrounded me in my childhood, and partly for the more sophisticated reason that the self-interest of any oppressed producer would tell him to stay at home, rather than to risk his neck in a revolution whose success or failure would be anyhow unaffected by his participation in it. Revolutionary workers and, a fortiori, bourgeois fellow-travellers without a particular material interest in socialism, must perforce be morally inspired.”

Gerald Cohen (1941–2009) Canadian philosopher

G. A. Cohen, Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality https://books.google.com/books?id=oeUQjOLNY-wC&pg=PA3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3

People , Travel , Home , Failure

“As a great socialist power the Soviet Union is fully aware of its responsibility to the peoples for preserving and strengthening peace. We are open to peaceful, mutually beneficial cooperation with states on all continents. We are for the peaceful settlement of all disputable international problems through serious, equal, and constructive talks.”

Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) Soviet politician

Quoted in "The Struggle of the USSR for Peace and Security" - Page 6 - History - 1984

People , Peace , Problem

“Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background… Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value… On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 220

War , World

“We have won on the Arlov, Kursk, Belgorod, and Kharkov grounds. We won because the country was being defended not only by the army but by the entire Soviet people. The Socialist economy, Soviet political structure, and Marxist-Leninist ideology proved their unarguable excellence against the Fascist economy, Fascist political structure, and Fascist ideology of Germany.”

Hovhannes Bagramyan (1897–1982) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "I. C. Bagramyan: A Photo Album About A Soviet Marshal" - Yerevan - 1987

People , Country

“Can a political human being, who wants to call herself a socialist, in her wildest imagination believe that Swedish social democracy could ever resist the dictatorship of the few? In that case, this person would find herself amongst fools and idiots. But this desire to see something radical amongst the social democratic leadership is the curse of the common left.”

Frank Baude (1936) Swedish politician

Frank Baude in Mot strömmen, pg 124. Translated from Swedish.

Fools , Democracy , Imagination , Personality

“The Nazi agitator whom, many years ago, I heard proclaim to a wildly cheering peasants’ meeting: ‘We don’t want lower bread prices, we don’t want higher bread prices, we don’t want unchanged bread prices—we want National-Socialist bread prices,’ came nearer explaining fascism than anybody I have heard since.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), pp. 13-14

“The enthronement in office of a Socialist Government will be a serious national misfortune such as has usually befallen great States only on the morrow of defeat in war. It will delay the return of prosperity; it will check enterprise and impair credit; it will open a period of increasing political confusion and disturbance.”

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

Letter to a correspondent (17 January 1924) shortly before Labour formed its first government, reprinted in The Times (18 January 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

War

“Hayek says that the problem with classical liberalism was that it was not pure enough. The government needed to restrict itself to establishing the rule of law and to using antitrust to break up monopolies. It was the overreach of the government beyond those limits, via central banking and social democracy, that caused all the trouble. A democratic government needs to limit itself to rule of law and antitrust–and perhaps soup kitchens and shelters. And what if democracy turns out not to produce a government that limits itself to those activities? Then, Hayek says, so much the worse for democracy. A Pinochet is then called for to, in a Lykourgan moment, minimalize the state. After social democracy has been leveled and the rubble cleared away, then–perhaps–a limited range of issues can be discussed and debated by a–limited–restored democracy, with some kind of group of right-wing army officers descended from latifundistas Council of Guardians in the background to ensure that property remains sacred and protected, and the government small enough to fit in a bathtub. […] Hayek was formed in Austria. From his perspective the property and enterprise respecting Imperial Habsburg government of Franz Josef eager to make no waves, to hold what it has, and to keep the lid off the pressure cooker appears not unattractive. This is especially so when you contrasted would be really existing authoritarian alternatives: anti-Semitic populist demagogue mayors of Vienna; nationalist Serbian or Croatian politicians interested in maintaining popular legitimacy by waging class war or ethnic war; separatists who seek independence and then one man, one vote, one time. An “authoritarian” after the manner of Franz Josef looks quite attractive in this context–and if you convince yourself but they are as dedicated to small government neoliberalism as you are, and that the Lykourgan moment of the form will be followed by soft rule and popular assent, so much the better. And if the popular assent is not forthcoming? Then Hayek can blame the socialists, and say it is their fault for not understanding how good a deal they are offered.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek: Focus/The Honest Broker for the Week of August 9, 2014 http://equitablegrowth.org/making-sense-friedrich-von-hayek-focusthe-honest-broker-week-august-9-2014/ (2014)

War , Law , Democracy , Understanding

“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)

“Because it calls itself the Conservative party; if it called itself the Socialist Workers' Party, I wouldn't have anything against it. It's egalitarian, it's opposed to the maintenance to the married family, which is the absolute pillar of morale and social conservatism. It's opposed to national independence, completely wedded to our membership of the supranational European Union which robs us of sovereignty. It's got much more in common with the SWP than it has with Conservatism.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

2015-09-14
Owen Jones meets Peter Hitchens
Owen Jones meets...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwuk6NoMv8
On his hostility to the Conservative Party

Family , Wedding

“Our own British Communist Party – if it is our own and British – might at any time suffer a change of heart and go back to bloody revolution. For all I know it may there already, underground. Anything is possible for a party which at one and the same time shouts for a United Front and puts up candidates against us with a view to splitting the Labour vote. All this is alien to our honest, straightforward, native, Socialist thought. … But you can't all the time say 'No, No, No' to the Communists. The real answer to the Communists is a positive answer. We have to show more vigorous fighting enthusiasm, more faith, more sense of high adventure.”

Herbert Morrison (1888–1965) British Labour politician

Peter Howard, "Men on Trial" (Blandford Press, 1945), p. 37-8
Speech in December 1944

Faith , Sense , Suffering , Change

“One of the fundamental preconditions of successful socialist construction is to ensure the people's readiness to defend themselves from the ravages of probable regional or global wars on the basis of the balance of forces generating from the basic contradictions of our epoch.”

Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937) Former dictator of Ethiopia

As quoted in Edmund J. Keller (1991) Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to People's Republic, Indiana University Press, p. 212

War , People , Success

“The spirit of our National Socialist idea has to overpower the spirit of liberalism and false democracy if there is to be a third Reich at all! Deeply rooted in organic life, we have realized that the false belief in the equality of man is the deadly threat with which liberalism destroys people and nation, culture and morals. violating the deepest levels of our being! We have to reject with fanatical zeal the frequent lie that people are basically equal and equal in regard to their influence in the state and their share of power! People are unequal, they are unequal from birth, become more unequal in life and are therefore to be valued unequally in their positions in society and in the state!”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

Source: " Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future https://books.google.com/books?id=fG_oAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA87", by Gregor Strasser - (1926 June 15)

Life , People , Lie , Democracy

“Socialism means power, power, and more power. Thoughts and schemes are nothing without power. The path to power has already been mapped: the valuable elements of German labor in union with the best representatives of the Old Prussian state idea, both groups determined to build a strictly socialist state to democratize our nation in the Prussian manner; both forged into a unit by the same sense of duty, by the awareness of a great obligation, by the will to obey in order to rule, to die in order to win, by the strength to make immense sacrifices in order to accomplish what we were born for, what we are, what could not be without us.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

Idea , Sense

“We in Ghana, are committed to the building of an industrialized socialist society. We cannot afford to sit still and be mere passive onlookers. We must ourselves take part in the pursuit of scientific and technological research as a means of providing the basis for our socialist society, Socialism without science is void. …”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

"Speech delivered by Osagyefo the President at the Laying of the Foundation Stone of Ghana's Atomic Reactor at Kwabenya on 25th November, 1964". As quoted ny E. A. Haizel in Education in Ghana, 1951 – 1966, in Arhin (1992), The Life and Work of Kwame Nkrumah.

Science , Parting

“Known for centuries, a tenet of classical liberalism, the pacific nature of democracy has become largely forgotten or ignored in the last half-century. That democracy is inherently peaceful is now probably believed by no more than a few prominent peace researchers. In part this has been due to the intellectual defection of Western intellectuals from classical liberalism to some variant of socialism, with its emphasis on the competitive violence and bellicosity of capitalist freedoms. Many intellectuals, and in particularly European and Third World peace researchers, have come to believe that socialist equalitarianism is the answer to violence; others, particularly American liberals, believe that if the socialist are wrong, then at least democracies are no better than other political systems in promoting peace.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Political Systems, Violence, and War,” chap. 14 in "Approaches to Peace: An Intellectual Map", edit, W. Scott Thompson and Kenneth M. Jensen, Washington, D.C., United States Institute of Peace, 1991, pp. 347-370; and “The Politics of Cold Blood,” Society, Vol. 27 (November/December, 1989) pp. 32-40

World , Peace , Democracy , Nature

“According to a stagist conception of progressive history (which is usually blind to its implicit teleology), the work of figures like Foucault, Derrida and other cutting-edge French theorists is often intuitively affiliated with a form of profound and sophisticated critique that presumably far surpasses anything found in the socialist, Marxist or anarchist traditions. It is certainly true and merits emphasis that the Anglophone reception of French theory, as John McCumber has aptly pointed out, had important political implications as a pole of resistance to the false political neutrality, the safe technicalities of logic and language, or the direct ideological conformism operative in the McCarthy-supported traditions of Anglo-American philosophy. However, the theoretical practices of figures who turned their back on what Cornelius Castoriadis called the tradition of radical critique—meaning anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist resistance—surely contributed to the ideological drift away from transformative politics. According to the spy agency itself, post-Marxist French theory directly contributed to the CIA’s cultural program of coaxing the left toward the right, while discrediting anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, thereby creating an intellectual environment in which their imperial projects could be pursued unhindered by serious critical scrutiny from the intelligentsia.”

Gabriel Rockhill (1972) philosopher

"The CIA reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left" (2017)

History , Support , Falseness

“From the moment when the workers of our country and of Russia began to struggle bravely against the Czarist Government and the capitalist exploiters, we notice more and more often that the priests, in their sermons, come out against the workers who are struggling. It is with extraordinary vigour that the clergy fight against the socialists and try by all means to belittle them in the eyes of the workers. The believers who go to church on Sundays and festivals are compelled, more and more often, to listen to a violent political speech, a real indictment of Socialism, instead of hearing a sermon and obtaining religious consolation there. Instead of comforting the people, who are full of cares and wearied by their hard lives, who go to church with faith in Christianity, the priests fulminate against the workers who are on strike, and against the opponents of the government; further, they exhort them to bear poverty and oppression with humility and patience. They turn the church and the pulpit into a place of political propaganda.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Socialism and the Churches (1905)

People , Faith , Fight , Patience

“I'm surprised she's friends with the Tories, Helen Bonham-Carter, because she's an artist and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, artists do tend, historically, to be on the left. People on the right tend to be practical, level-headed, capable, unsentimental realists; people on the left tend to be people with dreams, hope, vision, imagination. You have to have imagination on the left, don't you? You have to be able to look at Ed Miliband and imagine that he represents anything other than the death of the post-war socialist dream. Ed Miliband, how did he manage that; how did he make the Labour party less popular than under Blair? That's like catching a baby that's been thrown out of an aeroplane and then tripping up and dropping it in a gutter.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 3 Episode 3: "Satire"

Death , War , People , Dreams

“Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.”

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) American academic

per Irving Norton Fisher in a speech to the Yale socialists club 1911 http://praxeology.net/WGS-Anarchy.htm.

Time

“Our Party’s Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People’s Army.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

"The Songun-based revolutionary line is a great revolutionary line of our era and an ever-victorious banner of our revolution", address to the senior officials of the Central Committee of the Worker's Party (29 January 2003)

People , Country

“The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution — particularly the Socialist idea — is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" — or by that of its "advance guard," the Communist Party. Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception of revolution, as translated into actual practice.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

War , People , Idea , Change

“The United States has no socialist party, or no socialist party has been in power. That is the reason why it has always been the country of last resort for every currency.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for The Times (31 May 1984) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105505
Second term as Prime Minister

Country

“Salvation is not in the manipulation of man’s environment: it is the regeneration of man’s heart, and hence … the apostles were clearly forewarned against proclaiming a social (or socialist) gospel in place of the atoning, redemptive work of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Writings, The Mediator: Christ or the Church? The Witness of Jesus Christ (n. d.)

Heart , Christ

“In the Vienna of the First Republic a tendency to anti-semtism was particularly marked in the years of economic upheaval, between 1921 and 1923... At the time organized anti-semitism was definitely led by the newly-formed National-Socialist movement, which stressed the racial and "völkisch" aspects and linked the problem with the Anschluss movement.”

Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977) Chancellor of Austria

Source: The Brutal Takeover: The Austrian ex-Chancellor’s account of the Anschluss of Austria by Hitler, 1971, p. 63

Problem , Time

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

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

This misattribution is sourced from John Toland. In Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1976), it is attributed to Hitler in a speech of May 1, 1927. It is recorded in Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future by Gregor Strasser on June 15, 1926.
Misattributed

Wealth

“Fritz Nonnenbruch, the financial editor of the Voelkischer Beobachter, states: ‘There exists no law which binds the State. The state can do what it regards as necessary, because it has the authority…. The next stage of National-Socialist economic policy consists of replacing capitalist laws by policy.”

Günter Reimann (1904–2005) German economist

Source: The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism, 2014, p. 13 (Fritz Nonnenbruch, Die Dynamische Wirtschaft (Munich, Centralverlag der N.S.D.A.P., 1936), pp. 114-119

Law

“We have to frankly break the back of the secular-socialist machine, elect people committed to representing the American people, and then methodically rip the system apart.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

The Mark Levin Show
ABC Radio Networks
2010-06-24
Gingrich: We have to "break the back of the secular socialist machine … and then methodically rip the system apart"
2010-05-25
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201006250048
2011-03-30
2010s

People

“In the new-democratic republic under the leadership of the proletariat, the state enterprises will be of a socialist character and will constitute the leading force in the whole national economy, but the republic will neither confiscate capitalist private property in general nor forbid the development of such capitalist production as does not "dominate the livelihood of the people", for China's economy is still very backward.”

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

The Economy of New Democracy
On New Democracy (1940)

People

“Fellow workers and peasants, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the working people, with the working people, and for the working people. And for this revolution of the working people, by the working people, and for the working people we are prepared to give our lives.”

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

Original Spanish: "Compañeros obreros y campesinos, esta es la Revolución socialista y democrática de los humildes, con los humildes y para los humildes. Y por esta Revolución de los humildes, por los humildes y para los humildes estamos dispuestos a dar la vida."
On 16 April 1961, in a funeral oration in Vedado for victims of the air raids the day before, Fidel Castro referring to the January 1959 Cuban Revolution. Quoted in José Ramón Fernández. 2001. Playa Giron/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas, p. 56

People

“Somebody said that Bertolt Brecht [German socialist writer of political theater] wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here [in America] all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 26

Way , Communication , Thinking

“For as long as possible, the learned collegium has tried to defend its integrity against the close combat of ideologico-critical exposures. Do not unmask, lest you yourself be unmasked could be the unspoken rule. It is no accident that the great representatives of critique—the French moralists, the Encyclopedists, the socialists, and especially Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—remain outsiders to the scholarly domain. In all of them there is a satirical, polemical component that can scarcely be hidden under the mask of scholarly respectability. These signals of a holy nonseriousness, which remains one of the sure indexes of truth, can be employed as signposts to the critique of cynical reason.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 18

Truth , Learning

“At the present stage, the historic function of the Soviet Armed Forces is not restricted merely to their function in defending our motherland and the other socialist countries. In its foreign policy activity the Soviet state actively and purposefully opposes the export of counter-revolution and the policy of oppression, supports the national liberation struggle, and resolutely resists imperialist aggression in whatever distant region of our planet it may appear. The party and Soviet Government rely on the country's economic and defense might in fulfilling these tasks…The development of the external functions of the socialist armies is a natural process. It will continue.”

Andrei Grechko (1903–1976) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "National Security Affairs: Theoretical Perspectives and Contemporary Issues" - Page 111 - by B. Thomas Trout, James E. Harf - Political Science - 1982

Support , Nature , Distant , Appearance

“Some French socialist said that private property was theft … I say that private property is a nuisance.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

Referring to a famous statement by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon that "Property is theft!", as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 7

“One of the things that we can learn [from] the Cubans is that they are highly politically conscientized. …they understand what constitute progress and what constitute the enemy. And they have come to appreciate that they are in the situation they are because of the choice they have made, of not wanting to follow what the big brother America says they must do. And they know that if it was not [for the] illegal embargo imposed on them, they were actually going to be a much much more better country. Look at them, they have succeeded, the better education, better healthcare, the illiteracy levels are extreme low, under difficult circumstances. [The] quality of education, the quality of primary healthcare [of some country's without embargoes] is nothing compared to a country [Cuba] which is suffering from a serious economic embargo. So we can learn from the Cubans through their determination, through their appreciation that they are a unique nation, and have chosen their path, and they will lead by their conviction. [Interviewer Bryce-Pease asks Malema about Cuba's socialist-democratic model, lack of human rights, lack of freedom of association or freedom of speech among the opposition, and whether South Africa should take those as lessons. ] Malema: …if they think that their model works for them I am not the one to impose on them what should be the type of political systems in Cuba. They are the ones who can chose which direction they want to take. [Bryce-Pease: Do you see a model like Cuba existing in South Africa? ] When we can do actually much better, our democratic system is intact, it is working […] but there are a lot of things to learn from Cuba [for instance] inculcating the history of the revolution in our education system, so that everybody else is conscientized… Of course there will be some few elements who are not happy. … [Castro] is bound to commit mistakes but generally we are more than happy with the type of work he has done for the Cubans and for the Africans as well, having contributed to the decolonization of Africa and the defeat of apartheid in southern Africa…”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

In Cuba, after paying his respects at Fidel Castro's funeral, Julius Malema in Cuba for Castro's funeral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQy8ALs-aIo, SABC News (5 December 2016)

Education , History , Understanding , Thinking

“For historians of the left even to raise the question of affinities between Soviet Communism and ‘Fascism’ is tantamount to conceding the possibility of a causal relationship. Since ‘Fascism’ for them is by definition the antithesis of socialism and Communism, no such affinities can be admitted and the sources of ‘Fascism’ must be sought exclusively in conservative ideas and capitalist practices. In the Soviet Union this trend went so far the under Lenin, Stalin and their immediate successor, it was forbidden to use the term “National Socialist.””

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 241

Communication , Idea , Question

“Our religion teaches us that every human being is unique and must play his part in working out his own salvation. So whereas socialists begin with society, and how people can be fitted in, we start with Man, whose social and economic relationship are just part of his wider existence. Because we see man as a spiritual being, we utterly reject the Marxist view, which gives pride of place to economics…The religious tradition values economic activity, how we earn our living, create wealth, but warns against obsession with it, warns against putting it above all else. Money is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Greater London Young Conservatives (Iain Macleod Memorial Lecture - "Dimensions of Conservatism") (4 July 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103411
Leader of the Opposition

Money , People , Religion , Parting

“If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

The Pension Fund Revolution (1976)
1960s - 1980s

Country

“Socialists do not propose to substitute the domination of society by one privileged class for that of another. They seek to abolish class distinctions altogether. The abolition of classes is fundamental to the Socialist conception of society.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Labour Party in Perspective (Left Book Club, 1937), p. 145.
1930s

“I am the only living witness but I must say the truth. Contrary to the opinion of the National Socialists that the Jews were a highly organized group, the appalling fact was that they had no organization whatsoever. The mass of the Jewish people were taken completely by surprise. Never before has a people gone so unsuspectingly to its disaster. After the first anti-Jewish actions of the Germans, they thought now the wave was over and so they walked back to their undoing.”

Erich von dem Bach (1899–1972) German politician and SS functionary

Quoted in Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators : Essays on the Nazi Holocaust (1980) by Joel E. Dimsdale, p. 35

People , Truth

“Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social-democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered [sic] it… [S]ocialist movements end up [in] a society where liberty is the property of the state, and is (or is not) doled out to its citizens along with other contingent "benefits."”

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

As quoted in "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: A Symposium" https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/capitalism-socialism-and-democracy/ (1 April 1978), edited by William Barrett, Commentary
1970s

“I did not join this Party to have a yuppy-land approach, to run capitalism better than the Tories. I joined this party to change this society and create a socialist alternative.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

Speech to the Labour Party Conference (3 October 1988), quoted in "Scargill in furious attack on reform", The Times (4 October 1988), p. 9

Change

“Several implications follow from Hayek's insights into the nature of capitalism.(a) The claim "I deserve my pretax income" is not generally true. Nor should the basic organization of property rules be based on considerations of moral desert. Hence, claims about desert have no standing in deciding whether taxation for the purpose of funding social insurance is just.
(b) The claim that people rocked by the viccisitudes of the market, or poor people generally, are getting what they deserve is also not generally true. To moralize people's misfortunes in this way is both ignorant and mean. Capitalism continuously and randomly pulls the rug out from under even the most prudent and diligent people. It is in principle impossible for even the most prudent to forsee all the market turns that could undo them. (If it were possible, then efficient socialist planning would be possible, too. But it isn't.)
(c) Capitalist markets are highly dynamic and volatile. This means that at any one time, lots of people are going under. Often, the consequences of this would be catastrophic, absent concerted intervention to avert the outcomes generated by markets. For example, the economist Amartya Sen has documented that sudden shifts in people's incomes (which are often due to market volatility), and not absolute food shortages, are a principal cause of famine.
(d) The volatility of capitalist markets creates a profound and urgent need for insurance, over and above the insurance needs people would have under more stable (but stagnant) economic systems. This need is increased also by the fact that capitalism inspires a love of personal independence, and hence brings about the smaller ("nuclear") family forms that alone are compatible with it. We no longer belong to vast tribes and clans. This sharply reduces the ability of individuals under capitalism to pool risks within families, and limits the claims they can effectively make on nonhousehold (extended) family members for assistance. To avoid or at least ameliorate disaster and disruption, people need to pool the risks of capitalism.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

Love , People , Family , Food

“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…”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Children , People , Truth , Lie

“It is not the business of socialists to help the younger and stronger robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow all of them. To be able to do this, socialists must first of all tell the people the truth, namely, that this war is, in three respects, a war between slave-holders with the aim of consolidating slavery.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Socialism and War (1914), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

War , People , Truth , Business

“1. The standard neoclassical model the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand, the contention that market economies will ensure economic efficiency provides little guidance for the choice of economic systems, since once information imperfections (and the fact that markets are incomplete) are brought into the analysis, as surely they must be, there is no presumption that markets are efficient.
2. The Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem, asserting the equivalence of market and market socialist economies, is based on a misguided view of the market, of the central problems of resource allocation, and (not surprisingly, given the first two failures) of how the market addresses those basic problems.
3. The neoclassical paradigm, through its incorrect characterization of the market economies and the central problems of resource allocation, provides a false sense of belief in the ability of market socialism to solve those resource allocation problems. To put it another way, if the neoclassical paradigm had provided a good description of the resource allocation problem and the market mechanism, then market socialism might well have been a success. The very criticisms of market socialism are themselves, to a large extent, criticisms of the neoclassical paradigm.
4. The central economic issues go beyond the traditional three questions posed at the beginning of every introductory text: What is to be produced? How is it to be produced? And for whom is it to be produced? Among the broader set of questions are: How should these resource allocation decisions be made? Who should make these decisions? How can those who are responsible for making these decisions be induced to make the right decisions? How are they to know what and how much information to acquire before making the decisions? How can the separate decisions of the millions of actors decision makers in the economy be coordinated?
5. At the core of the success of market economies are competition, markets, and decentralization. It is possible to have these, and for the government to still play a large role in the economy; indeed it may be necessary for the government to play a large role if competition is to be preserved. There has recently been extensive confusion over to what to attribute the East Asian miracle, the amazingly rapid growth in countries of this region during the past decade or two. Countries like Korea did make use of markets; they were very export oriented. And because markets played such an important role, some observers concluded that their success was convincing evidence of the power of markets alone. Yet in almost every case, government played a major role in these economies. While Wade may have put it too strongly when he entitled his book on the Taiwan success Governing the Market, there is little doubt that government intervened in the economy through the market.
6. At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could "solve" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz book Whither Socialism?

Source: Whither Socialism? (1994), Ch. 1 : The Theory of Socialism and the Power of Economic Ideas

Books , Way , Communication , Failure

“There is nothing that helps the Socialist Party so much as receiving an occasional deathblow. The oftener it is killed the more active, the more energetic, the more powerful it becomes.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Help

“If Theodore Roosevelt is the great champion of democracy —the arch foe of autocracy, what business had he as the guest of honor of the Prussian Kaiser? And when he met the Kaiser, and did honor to the Kaiser, under the terms imputed to him, wasn’t it pretty strong proof that he himself was a Kaiser at heart? Now, after being the guest of Emperor Wilhelm, the Beast of Berlin, he comes back to this country, and wants you to send ten million men over there to kill the Kaiser; to murder his former friend and pal. Rather queer, isn’t it? And yet, he is the patriot, and we are the traitors. I challenge you to find a Socialist anywhere on the face of the earth who was ever the guest of the Beast of Berlin, except as an inmate of his prison—the elder Liebknecht and the younger Liebknecht, the heroic son of his immortal sire.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Men , Democracy , Business , Strong

“This new-democratic republic will be different from the old European-American form of capitalist republic under bourgeois dictatorship, which is the old democratic form and already out of date. On the other hand, it will also be different from the socialist republic of the Soviet type under the dictatorship of the proletariat which is already flourishing in the U. S. S. R., and which, moreover, will be established in all the capitalist countries and will undoubtedly become the dominant form of state and governmental structure in all the industrially advanced countries. However, for a certain historical period, this form is not suitable for the revolutions in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. During this period, therefore, a third form of state must be adopted in the revolutions of all colonial and semi-colonial countries, namely, the new-democratic republic. This form suits a certain historical period and is therefore transitional; nevertheless, it is a form which is necessary and cannot be dispensed with.”

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

On New Democracy (1940)
Original: (zh-CN) 这种新民主主义共和国，一方面和旧形式的、欧美式的、资产阶级专政的、资本主义的共和国相区别，那是旧民主主义的共和国，那种共和国已经过时了；另一方面，也和苏联式的、无产阶级专政的、社会主义的共和国相区别，那种社会主义的共和国已经在苏联兴盛起来，并且还要在各资本主义国家建立起来，无疑将成为一切工业先进国家的国家构成和政权构成的统治形式；但是那种共和国，在一定的历史时期中，还不适用于殖民地半殖民地国家的革命。因此，一切殖民地半殖民地国家的革命，在一定历史时期中所采取的国家形式，只能是第三种形式，这就是所谓新民主主义共和国。这是一定历史时期的形式，因而是过渡的形式，但是不可移易的必要的形式。

Country

“We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (do not forget the immense wealth of some monasteries and lauras). Without this fund any government work in general, any economic build-up in particular, and any upholding of soviet principles in Genoa especially is completely unthinkable. In order to get our hands on this fund of several hundred million gold rubles (and perhaps even several hundred billion), we must do whatever is necessary. But to do this successfully is possible only now. All considerations indicate that later on we will fail to do this, for no other time, besides that of desperate famine, will give us such a mood among the general mass of peasants that would ensure us the sympathy of this group, or, at least, would ensure us the neutralization of this group in the sense that victory in the struggle for the removal of church property unquestionably and completely will be on our side.
One clever writer on statecraft correctly said that if it is necessary for the realization of a well-known political goal to perform a series of brutal actions then it is necessary to do them in the most energetic manner and in the shortest time, because masses of people will not tolerate the protracted use of brutality. … Now victory over the reactionary clergy is assured us completely. In addition, it will be more difficult for the major part of our foreign adversaries among the Russian emigres abroad, i. e., the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Milyukovites, to fight against us if we, precisely at this time, precisely in connection with the famine, suppress the reactionary clergy with utmost haste and ruthlessness.
Therefore, I come to the indisputable conclusion that we must precisely now smash the Black Hundreds clergy most decisively and ruthlessly and put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades. … The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better because this "audience" must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Letter to Comrade Molotov for the Politburo (19 March 1922) http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/ae2bkhun.html
Variant translation:
It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables. … I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.
As translated in The Unknown Lenin : From the Secret Archive (1996) edited by Richard Pipes, pp. 152-4
1920s

People , Way , Mood , Thinking

“But contrast the attitude of the Socialist Government towards their Bolshevist friends and their attitude to the great self-governing Dominions of the Crown. To the enemies of Britain, of civilization, of freedom, to those who deserted us in the crises of the war—smiles, compliments, caresses, cash. But for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, who sent their brave men to fight and die by scores of thousands, who never flinched and never wearied, who are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh—to them nothing but frigid repulsion. Our bread for the Bolshevist serpent; our aid for the foreigner of every country; our favours for the Socialists all over the world who have no country; but for our own daughter States across the oceans, on whom the future of the British island and nation depends, only the cold stones of indifference, aversion, and neglect. (Cheers.) That is the policy with which the Socialist Government confronts us, and against that policy we will strive to marshal the unconquerable might of Britain.”

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

Speech in Edinburgh (25 September 1924), quoted in The Times (26 September 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

Men , War , World , Smile

“It isn't necessary to be socialists in order to love Pertini. Whatever he says or does, smells of cleanliness, of loyalty and of sincerity.”

Indro Montanelli book Storia d'Italia

Storia d'Italia, volume l'Italia degli anni di fango.
2000s - 2010s

Love , Sincerity , Loyalty

“…the outpourings of Elisée Reclus were ideals of the French ouvrier, diluted with absinthe, resulting in a bourgeois dream of order and inertia. Neither made a pretence of anarchy except as a momentary stage towards order and unity. Neither of them had formed any other conception of the universe than what they had inherited from the priestly class to which their minds obviously belonged. With them, as with the socialist, communist, or collectivist, the mind that followed nature had no relation.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Dreams , Nature , Universe

“I bequeath the republic to the republicans and not to the monarchists, and the work of social reform to the socialist and not to the middle class.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Joshua Muravchik, as quoted in Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, Encounter Books (2002) p. 170.
Undated

“We handed the most important belongings of our people -- the railroads and the banks -- to aliens who 2000 years ago had turned the temple into a house of usury. Back then there was a man who had the bravery to drive out these scoundrels with a whip! If today a national socialist is seen with such a temple-whip, he's thrown into jail.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Wir haben unsere wichtigsten Volksgüter, die Eisenbahnen und die Banken, den Fremdlingen überlassen, die schon vor 2000 Jahren den Tempel zu einem Wucherhaus gemacht haben. Damals hatte schon einer den Mut besessen, mit einer Peitsche dieses Gesindel auszutreiben! Wenn heute ein Nationalsozialist mit einer solchen Tempelpeitsche angetroffen wird, wird er ins Gefängnis geworfen.
05/01/1925, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament; debate about the budget of the ministry of justice ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

People , Housing

“Our aim is not just to remove our uniquely incompetent Government from office—it is to destroy the socialist fallacies—indeed the whole fallacy of socialism—that the Labour Party exists to spread.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Junior Carlton Club Political Council (4 May 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103017
Leader of the Opposition

“Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

National Post, Dec. 8 2000 p. A18.
2000

Appearance , Country

“For my own part I have always maintained that to claim for the Socialist movement that it is a "class" war dependent for its success upon the "class" consciousness of one section of the community is doing Socialism an injustice, and indefinitely postponing its triumph. It is, in fact, lowering it to the level of a mere faction fight. Socialism offers a platform broad enough for all to stand upon who accept its principles … Socialism makes war upon a system, not upon a class.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Article in Labour Leader, September 1904.
"Keir Hardie's Speeches and Writings", edited by Emrys Hughes ("Forward" Printing and Publishing Company Ltd, Glasgow, 1928), pp. 118, 120.

War , Communication , Success , Fight

“Is it possible or not, given the present conditions in our continent, to achieve it (socialist power, that is) by peaceful means? We emphatically answer that, in the great majority of cases, this is not possible. The most that could be achieved would be the formal takeover of the bourgeois superstructure of power and the transition to socialism of that government which, under the established bourgeois legal system, having achieved formal power will still have to wage a very violent struggle against all who attempt, in one way or another, to check its progress toward new social structures.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)

Peace , Way

“Few political authors employ the term New Age anymore; however, … many use equivalents or near-equivalents such as communitarian, evolutionary, green, holistic, integral, post-socialist, radical centrist, spiritual, transformational, and transpartisan, and that's OK. Perhaps the new generation, not being ego-attached to any of these, will finally come up with a term we can all say "Aha!"”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

to.
Page 180.
New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative (2015)

Age

“We know what we want to do as a Conservative Party. There are two ways to run a country. One is towards Socialist Marxism and the other is to a free society. The more you have nationalisation and the more the State takes choice away from the people, the further you are going to the total Socialist Marxist society. The more you do that, the more you relinquish your freedom and income to the State.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Taunton Conservatives (20 February 1976) https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102833
Leader of the Opposition

People , Way , Freedom , Country

“We all know in our gut that art educates. In other societies, they're aware of the power it has of speaking directly to the masses, teaching them to be better socialists, better citizens. The trouble is that with us it's fallen into the wrong hands. Forget the speculators… The concept of the collector is so rotten by now that it stinks.”

Mary McCarthy book Cannibals and Missionaries

Cannibals and Missionaries (1979)

Education , Art , Forgetting

“[W]here’s the massive, collective condemnation about this recent Tennessee case? I’m quite sure that, once again, the left will find a way to make Samson the victim, and the young church usher, Robert Caleb Engle, the assailant. It’s just another example of how things have become upside down in America — and how we’ve all become pawns in the dangerous and delusional game being waged by the progressive, socialist left.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, I'd like to see MORE football player protests — NOT less (27 September 2017)

Way , Game

“As a democratic Socialist profoundly committed to the rule of law, I could not condone, let alone encourage, defiance of the law.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (Hansard, 6 November 1974, Cols. 1076–7).

Law

““How, in this day and age, can any one of you claim to be better than your fellow human beings?”
“Because we are,” said Marilyn Deighton-True with a shrug. “Face reality, Giles, or it will face you. You can spout all the socialiste nouveau crap you like, but it simply doesn’t apply to a meritocracy.””

Kage Baker book The Life of the World to Come

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 6, “Alec and His Friends” (p. 106)

Age , Reality

“Only the working masses can change society; but they will not do that spontaneously, on their own. They can rock capitalism back onto its heels but they will only knock it out if they have the organisation, the socialist party, which can show the way to a new, socialist order of society. Such a party does not just emerge. It can only be built out of the day-to-day struggles of working people.”

Paul Foot

Why You Should Be a Socialist http://www.marxists.org/archive/foot-paul/1977/wysbas/ch8.htm, Ch8 (1977)

People , Way , Change

“The Turkish and Greek tyrants had reduced the Bulgarian people to the lowest level of human culture, but their Bulgarians could not root out. Under the consciousness of the people there were still embryos of national sense. The Bulgarian people realized that it was a people and had its own independent state and even managed to win its people's church. Russia freed a part of the Bulgarian people. The liberated Bulgarians were called for autonomous rule, but they were divided into two divisions … One of them, called Slavophiles, was of the opinion that Bulgaria should be placed under Russia's protectorate because it could not be itself ruled … The other party, which was called patriots, was for an independent Bulgaria. The fierce struggles between these two parties fill the history of Bulgaria from liberation to the world war. Russophiles grew up with various modern trends, such as Communists, Socialists, and other truths that did not give birth to tobacco and native tobacco. Fatherland was considered a vice for backwardness. It's hard for him to say he's a patriot.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

Source: Ziezi ex quo Vulgares, "Забравеният д-р Ганчо Ценов" http://ziezi.net/cenov.html

War , People , Truth , World

“Socialists don't like people to do things for themselves. Socialists like to get people dependent on the state! You never build a great society that way.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Post-Prime Ministerial

People , Way , Dependency

“Beware of those who come pretending to help education when they are trying to seize control of education. Socialist and Communist planners have ambitions to eliminate all local control - which means the teachers themselves would lose control.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Education , Teachers , Help

“Perhaps the values of socialists can only be realized by socialists in a nonsocialist society.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"The Free Market Cargo Cult" (1990).
1990s, For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports (1993)

“The Poor Peasants’ Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants. But between the kulaks, who are a small minority, and the poor or semi-proletarians there is the section of the middle peasants. The Soviet government has never declared or conducted any struggle against them. Any steps or measures to the contrary must be condemned most vigorously and stopped. The socialist government must pursue a policy of agreement with the middle peasants.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Draft of a Telegram to all Soviets of Deputies Concerning the Worker-Peasant Alliance" (16 August 1918) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/16.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 28.
1910s

Fight

“But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing toward a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Alarms and Discursions (1910), 'The New House,' pp. 161-162

People

“The Nazi party had been too hasty in incorporating the word ‘Socialist’ in its title, Hitler indeed wished it to be ‘Social Revolutionary.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: A History of National Socialism (1934), p. 85

“Never let me hear anyone say again that a Socialist State cannot provide outlets for those with initiative. The rewards given to ability in the U. S. S. R. at all levels are far greater than those given to the employed in capitalist Britain. I have seen it and it works.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Reynolds News (17 March 1946)
Backbench MP

“The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.”

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

On National Socialism and World Relations http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler1.htm, speech in the German Reichstag (January 30, 1937). German translation published by H. Müller & Sohn in Berlin.
1930s

Communication

“We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for socio-political practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

African Socialism Revisited http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/1967/african-socialism-revisited.htm, 1967.

“Nobody can rule innocently,' as Saint-Just puts it. And in totalitarianism, the Party becomes again the very subject who, being the immediate embodiment of the People can rule innocently. It is not by accident that the real-socialist countries call themselves 'people's democracies.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

165
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

People , Democracy , Country

“With a Socialist government, there will not be a national surplus whilst there continues to be inequality.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Oct. 2003, when Cristóbal Montoro, then Home Affairs Minister, announced that there was a surplus in the public purse.
As Opposition Leader
Source: El Mundo, Rodríguez Zapatero reprocha a Rajoy que no afronte el debate presupuestario como líder del PP http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2003/10/28/espana/1067356250.html (Spanish)

“[W]e need to shove aside the notions of the Progressives and Lost-Causers, that Reconstruction was some sort of Vichy occupation of a poor, pitiable South, as well as of the Marxists, that Reconstruction could have been the beginning of a socialist America had not the monied interests suppressed it. Neither of these approaches has much sense of the texture of Reconstruction’s reality.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Interview with Sara Gabbard (2018)

Reality , Sense

“The National Socialist Movement, on the contrary, will always let its foreign policy be determined by the necessity to secure the space necessary to the life of our Folk. It knows no Germanising or Teutonising, as in the case of the national bourgeoisie, but only the spread of its own Folk. It will never see in the subjugated, so called Germanised, Czechs or Poles a national, let alone Folkish, strengthening, but only the racial weakening of our Folk.”

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

1920s, Zweites Buch (1928)

Life

“The Abolitionists and Socialists, who, alone have explored the recesses of social science, well understand that they can never establish their Utopia until private property is abolished or equalized. The man without property is theoretically, and, too often, practically, without a single right.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857)

Understanding , Science

“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)

“Those in the Ivy League, Hollywood, the media, the leftist rich, and most schools and universities who, like Obama, consider themselves superior intellectuals earmarked by some demented destiny to implement their pagan, socialist, and anti-human ideology in the United States. They first mean to destroy the Second Amendment, and then, safe to be tyrants, though cowards all, they intend remake in their own worthless image those Americans who still work hard, who believe in and are willing to fight to defend liberty, and who have learned the Founders' key lesson, namely, that the federal government must always be seen as an enemy of freedom and therefore must be kept in check and opposed to the hilt whenever necessary. Perhaps it would be best if Obama and his Ivy-League elite studied the words of a man they hail an icon of their party and with whom they share a liking for slavery, but who actually is a man they do not in the least understand.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.
2010s

School , Understanding , Study , Freedom

“The future of mankind, for the socialist, is simple: pull down the existing order and allow the future to emerge.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Eliot and Conservatism" (p. 208)
A Political Philosophy (2006)

Future

“We Socialists are not reformers; we are revolutionaries. We Socialists do not propose change forms. We care nothing for forms. We want a change of the inside of the mechanism of society, let the form take care of itself.”

Daniel De Leon (1852–1914) American newspaper editor

Revolution
Reform or Revolution (1896)

Change

“To white Americans of the thirties, however, blacks North and South were invisible. Only th radicals made an attempt to break the racial barriers: Socialists, Trotskyists, Communists most of all.”

Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States

Source: A People's History of the United States (1980), Chapter 15

“It is advertising that enthrones the customer as king. This infuriates the socialist…[it is] the crossing of the boundary between West Berlin and East Berlin. It is Checkpoint Charlie, or rather Checkpoint Douglas, the transition from the world of choice and freedom to the world of drab, standard uniformity.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Attacking the Labour President of the Board of Trade, Douglas Jay, who wanted to standardise packaging for detergents. (The Daily Telegraph 29 April 1967); from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 430
1960s

World , Freedom

“Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly. It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being. I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letter to Steve Hodge.
1990s

Men , God , Peace , Soul

Quotes about socialist page 2

Quotes about socialist
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