Quotes about socialist (840 quotes, page 4)

“To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”

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

As quoted in Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm, Farrar & Rinehart (1941) p. 233, Matthew Lange, Antisemitic Elements in the Critique of Capitalism in German Culture, 1850-1933, Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, (2007) p. 290
1940s

“We must agree that the socialist countries are, in a certain way, accomplices of imperialist exploitation … The socialist countries have the moral duty to put an end to their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)

Way , Country

“Unless during the first five years so great a degree of change has been accomplished as to deprive Capitalism of its power, it is unlikely that a Socialist Party will be able to maintain its position of control without adopting some exceptional means, such as the prolongation of the life of Parliament for a further term without an election.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Can Socialism come by Constitutional Methods? (1933), p. 2, quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 151.

Life , Change

“Socialization was, in fact, the product of a maturation of trends already implicit in the earliest Fascist formulations. The trend that matured into socializations was already manifest by the time of the Second Convention of Syndical and Corporative Studies, held in Ferrara in May 1932. Its substance was provided by the persistent socialist and anti-bourgeois biases of radical national syndicalism conjoined with the totalitarian pretensions of neo-idealism.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 293

Study , Time

“Socialists must be in favor of an aristocratic form of government. We must have the best men for the job... In the dictator you must have a man who has not only the power to govern but the force of character to impose himself as dictator whether you like him or not.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“Socialism urged to find dictator,” Berkeley Daily Gazette (Nov. 30, 1927)
1890s

Men

“The war which is being waged today by the German armed forces under the highest command of Adolf Hitler is a war of an immense reform. It does not only overcome the world of ideas of the French Revolution, but it also exterminates directly all those racially infecting germs of Jewry and its bastards, which now since over a hundred years could develop without check among the European nations. The Jew question, which for 2000 years was a problem for the European nations which was not solved, will now find its solution through the national socialistic revolution for Germany and whole Europe.”

Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) German architect and politician

“The Jewish Question as a World Problem,”, Radio Broadcast, 28 March 1941. Quoted in Roderick Stackelberg, Sally A. Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts. Routledge, 2013 (pp. 337-8).

War , World , Idea , Question

“The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth, and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As quoted in "Socialism is So Hot Right Now" https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/socialism-hot-right-now/ (17 September 2018), by Jonah Goldberg, Commentary
1990s

Communication , Wealth

“I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering…I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside…what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Source: On BBC's Panorama (22 March 1976)

Strong

“I know some people say I can be funny. But there is always a deeper meaning to what I say. I am a socialist at heart and have the interests of the poor in mind. When people see how I manage to work my way out of tough situations, it gives them hope in their own life”

Lalu Prasad Yadav (1948) Indian politician

In an interview to Siddharth Srivastava ( India's man for all seasons, Asia Times, September 29, 2004, 2006-05-29 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FI29Df02.html,).

Life , People , Hope , Way

“Our program was a scientific one it must be constantly changed at minor points to meet the continuous advance of science. And I maintain that no man – Marx, in spite of his comprehensive and deep intellect, as little as any other – can bring science to final perfection; and this position is for everyone who understands the nature of science a foregone conclusion. No socialist, therefore, has the right to condemn attacks on the theoretical ideas of the Marxian teachings or to excommunicate any one from the party because of such attacks. But it is wholly different when such attacks imply a complete overturning of our whole conception of society, as, for example, is the case with Bernstein. Then vigorous defense is in order. Far more dangerous than theoretical assaults are practical disavowals of our principles. Theoretical discussions interest only a comparatively small portion of our membership; whereas practical disavowal of principles and tactical offenses against the party program touch every party comrade and arouse the attention of every party comrade; and when they are not quickly checked and corrected they bring confusion into the whole party.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Idea , Understanding , Nature , Science

“The situation changed visibly when sentimental reasons and long-term political aims gave way to a stern, ruthless nationalist ideology which would brook no compromise. Hitler had categorically demanded the Anschluss in "Mein Kampf"…. As early as 1923 Hitler had decide that, if necessary, the National-Socialists must take over the government in Austria by force.”

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. 39

Way , Change

“Socialism is offered as a remedy. It is pretty to look at, but it does not mean liberty. It means just the other thing, because it brings us face to face with the same old equation. We know what the socialist leaders would do, for human nature does not change.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From "George H. Earle, Jr., Doctor to Ailing Corporations". Munsey's Magazine (February 1910:683-691)

Nature , Change

“A plan of large size can be made a reality either by an intensely capitalistic method of development or by a genuinely socialistic approach. The Capitalistic way is ruled out by the fact that the political conditions are wholly incompatible with it, and a pursuit of this method may lead to a political breakdown.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

Source: Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People, p.32.

Way , Reality

“My so-called foreign friends do neither me nor the situation nor themselves any good when they try to bring me into opposition to the allegedly impossible National Socialist economic theories and declare me to some extent the protector of economic reason. I can assure you that everything I say and do has the complete approval of the Fuhrer and that I would not say or do anything that does not have his approval.”

Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970) German politician

Speech in Leipzig (4 March 1935), as quoted in The Trial of the Germans : An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants Before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (1997) by Eugene Davidson, p. 234.

“[S]ocialism was to reap the cultural, scientific, creative, and communal rewards of abolishing private property and free markets, and to end human tyranny. Using the command of the state, Communism sought to create this socialist society. What in fact occurred was the achievement of power by a group of inhumane despots: Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Mengistu, Ceausescu, Hoxha, and so on, and so on.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Communication

“After all, that’s exactly why we call ourselves National Socialists! We want to start by implementing socialism in our nation among our Volk! It is not until the individual nations are socialist that they can address themselves to international socialism.”

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

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), p. 288

“Of all the sights and sounds which attracted me on my first arrival to live in London in the mid-thirties, one combined operation left a lingering, individual spell. I naturally went to Hyde Park to hear the orators, the best of the many free entertainments on offer in the capital. I heard the purest milk of the world flowing, then as now, from the platform of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Debts of Honour, 1980.
1980s

World , Nature

“He [Tolstoy] did not believe in the political action advocated by the socialist party. He thought it futile to change the personnel of the Government, and it appeared to him that the making of new laws is an absurdity which could effect no change in conditions.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 72

Law , Appearance , Change

“When we reject unemployment as an economic instrument — as we do — and when we reject also superficial remedies, as socialists must, then we must ask ourselves unflinchingly what is the cause of high unemployment. Quite simply and unequivocally, it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. There are no scapegoats.”

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

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, p. 188.
Speech at the Labour Party Conference, 28 September 1976.
Prime Minister

“Within the ranks of the people, democracy is correlative with centralism and freedom with discipline. They are the two opposites of a single entity, contradictory as well as united, and we should not one-sidedly emphasize one to the denial of the other. Within the ranks of the people, we cannot do without freedom, nor can we do without discipline; we cannot do without democracy, nor can we do without centralism. This unity of democracy and centralism, of freedom and discipline, constitutes our democratic centralism. Under this system, the people enjoy extensive democracy and freedom, but at the same time they have to keep within the bounds of socialist discipline.”

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

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 民主自由都是相对的，不是绝对的，都是在历史上发生和发展的。在人民内部，民主是对集中而言，自由是对纪律而言。这些都是一个统一体的两个矛盾着的侧面，它们是矛盾的，又是统一的，我们不应当片面地强调某一个侧面而否定另一个侧面。在人民内部，不可以没有自由，也不可以没有纪律；不可以没有民主，也不可以没有集中。这种民主和集中的统一，自由和纪律的统一，就是我们的民主集中制。在这个制度下，人民享受着广泛的民主和自由；同时又必须用社会主义的纪律约束自己。这些道理，广大人民群众是懂得的。

People , Democracy , Freedom , Time

“Whatever one thinks of his Marxism today, Mussolini was accepted by his socialist peers as a Marxist theoretician. He rose to leadership in the Italian Socialist Party at least in part on the basis of his recognized capacity as a socialist intellectual.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, (1969), p. 99

Thinking , Parting

“The main thing I tried to stress was how badly I was treated in the American camp at Freising, but the American prosecutor and the judges ruled that my comments on my poor treatment there had to be expunged from the record because it was irrelevant. I don't think it is irrelevant when we National Socialists are accused of war crimes and of murdering 5 million Jews and millions of other innocent people such as partisans, hostages, war prisoners. Therefore, I should have been allowed to insert into the record of this trial how badly I was treated personally as a prisoner of war, after the war was over, mind you, in Freising.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

To Leon Goldensohn, June 15, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

War , People , Thinking , Personality

“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

Life , People , Knowledge

“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

The Star, January 30, 2007.
2007

Money , Wealth

“What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech. But incorrect ideas among the people are quite a different matter. Will it do to ban such ideas and deny them any opportunity for expression? Certainly not. It is not only futile but very harmful to use crude methods in dealing with ideological questions among the people, with questions about man's mental world. You may ban the expression of wrong ideas, but the ideas will still be there. On the other hand, if correct ideas are pampered in hothouses and never exposed to the elements and immunized against disease, they will not win out against erroneous ones. Therefore, it is only by employing the method of discussion, criticism and reasoning that we can really foster correct ideas and overcome wrong ones, and that we can really settle issues.”

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

" VIII. ON "LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOSSOM LET A HUNDRED SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONTEND" AND "LONG-TERM COEXISTENCE AND MUTUAL SUPERVISION" "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 对于非马克思主义的思想，应该采取什么方针呢？对于明显的反革命分子，破坏社会主义事业的分子，事情好办，剥夺他们的言论自由就行了。对于人民内部的错误思想，情形就不相同。禁止这些思想，不允许这些思想有任何发表的机会，行不行呢？当然不行。对待人民内部的思想问题，对待精神世界的问题，用简单的方法去处理，不但不会收效，而且非常有害。不让发表错误意见，结果错误意见还是存在着。而正确的意见如果是在温室里培养出来的，如果没有见过风雨，没有取得免疫力，遇到错误意见就不能打胜仗。因此，只有采取讨论的方法，批评的方法，说理的方法，才能真正发展正确的意见，克服错误的意见，才能真正解决问题。

People , World , Disease , Idea

“Not only, then, did Hitler do nothing to assist in the crushing of Munich’s ‘Red Republic’; he was an elected representative of his battalion during this whole period of existence. How to interpret this evidence is, nevertheless, not altogether clear. Since the Munich garrison had firmly backed the revolution since November, and again in April supported the radical move to the Räterepublik, the obvious implication must be that Hitler, in order to have been elected as a soldiers’ representative, voiced in these months the views of the socialist governments he later denounced with every fibre of his body as ‘criminal.”

Ian Kershaw (1943) British historian

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 118

Support

“The path away from economic freedom is, as Hayek long ago demonstrated, the road to serfdom. The road may be a long one: the pace may be swift or slow: but the destination cannot be changed. State ownership, state monopolies, state regulation and state planning, through the centralisation of economic power, inevitably lead to economic failure. They inevitably increase both the temptation and the scope for abuses of political power until freedom itself is threatened. The planned economies, the controlled societies which socialism requires, pervert what are truly economic decisions for the market into political decisions for the politician or the bureaucrat. The fruits of centralised economics are corruption, poverty and servility—and in the socialist society the only medicine which may be prescribed is heavier doses of the same socialist poison.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

The 1985 Disraeli Lecture (13 November, 1985).

Failure , Decision , Freedom , Change

“North Korea is a unique socialist country in that its ruling ideology is conveyed through what is written about its leaders, not by them, and the message could hardly be simpler. Foreigners bad, Koreans good, Leader best.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2000s, Mother of All Mothers (September 2004)

Country

“We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.”

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

The teachings about this society are called socialism.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/rp/1.htm
To the Rural Poor
1903
Collected Works
6
366
Lenin
Vladimir Ilich
Marxists.
1900s

People

“Alternate form: I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday be communists. I am a socialist. I think that we should strive toward a socialist society - all the way to communism.”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

Reported by Paul Scott in the Lewiston Daily Sun (27 September 1972) again as remarks at Duke University; http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FXwgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7mcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1010,3814989 reported elsewhere as a remark made at Michigan State University (22 November 1970) and cited to the Detroit Free Press but without a date, page or headline.
Rick Perlstein, in a 2005 London Review of Books article and in his 2008 book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Simon and Schuster, p517 http://books.google.com/books?id=dM_enWzoghoC&pg=PA517#v=onepage&q&f=false), accused Helms of inventing the quote: "They tapped their network of friendly media propagandists, like the future Senator Jesse Helms, then a TV editorialist, who supplied an invented quotation that still circulates as part of the Fonda cult’s liturgy." http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n22/rick-perlstein/operation-barbarella The COINTELPRO Papers (2002) documents a separate attempt to plant false quotes from Fonda in the press.
Disputed

Hope , Way , Communication , Thinking

“The Soviet Union has long been proposing to outlaw chemical weapons, to remove them from the arsenals of states. We are prepared for resolution of this problem either on a global basis or piece by piece. As one of the first steps the USSR and the other socialist countries proposed in January 1984 that agreement be reached on ridding Europe of all types of chemical weapons.”

Konstantin Chernenko (1911–1985) Soviet politician

Quoted in "World Peace and the Developing Countries" - Page 126 - by Joseph Rotblat, Ubiratan D'Ambrosio - 1986

Problem , Country

“A devout and serious Christian, she was often bothered by what she read of socialists because she could not, instantly and absolutely, see where they were so wrong. To her horrified ear, they kept sounding as though they had ideas rather like Christ's.”

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) Irish journalist

Pages 11-12
A Discord of Trumpets (1956)

Idea , Reading , Christ

“In every human soul there is a socialist and an individualist, an authoritarian and a fanatic for liberty, as in each there is a Catholic and a Protestant. The same is true of the mass movements in which men marshal themselves for common action.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 2
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Men , Soul

“One way to clarify the origin and character, if not the justification, of the ideal inspiring our programmatic institutional ideas is to say that our program arises from the generalization of aims broadly shared by the great secular doctrines of emancipation of the recent past—both liberal and socialist—and by the social theories that supported them. At the heart of each of these doctrines lay the belief that the weakening of social divisions and hierarchies would reveal deeper commonalities and liberate productive and creative powers. The theoretical and practical consequences of this belief were drastically constricted by dogmatic assumptions about the possible forms of social change and their possible institutional expressions. We have attacked the second set of constraints and therefore, by implication, the first. The result is a more generalized or radicalized version of the social ideal. Our attack on these constraints has led us to rethink the content of the progressive cause.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: The Critical Legal Studies Movementː Another Time, A Greater Task (2015), p. 104-5

Way , Idea , Support , Change

“As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name of a country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the last place in the world you'd want to live.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"A Plan for Spam" http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html, August 2002

People , World , Country

“The National Socialist Party in Austria never tried to hide its inclination for a greater Germany. That Austria would one day return to the Reich was a matter of course for all National Socialists and for true Germans in Austria.”

Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946) austrian chancellor and politician, convicted of crimes against humanity in Nuremberg Trials and sentenced …

Speech in Berlin, April 7, 1938. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997

“The twenty-six-year-old Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler youth, who could boast of standing close to Hitler, declared bluntly in those revolutionary June weeks: ‘A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Der Fuehrer, Hitler’s Rise to Power (1944), p. 501

Youth

“Boredom is a powerful incentive to come up with bad ideas, especially for intellectuals. "Capitalism," says Irving Kristol, "is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived." The reason it's so unromantic is that it doesn't tell people what to do and that can be very frustrating for intellectuals who want to tell people what to do. Indeed, court intellectuals have always been more influential where the people are less free, because when an intellectual persuades a dictator or a socialist prime minister (a small distinction to be sure), their advice gets translated into reality. When an intellectual says, "It would be a better society if all beer was free" a free-market politician would, or at least should, say "Maybe, but what can I do about it?"”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2000s, 2001, Free-Market Boring…Losing Consciousness (2001)

People , Idea , Beer , Reality

“In brief, let us define the anarchist as a political individualist and an economic socialist. In contrast, the libertarian can be defined as an individualist, both politically and economically.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Anarchy (1959)

“Faced with the difficulties of unilateral reflation, some socialists are tempted to seek salvation through trade restrictions or competitive devaluation. But such beggar-my-neighbour policies, if pursued on the scale required…are more likely to lead to a trade and currency war than to insulate their sponsors from the recession in the outside world.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

Speech to the twelfth congress of the Confederation of Socialist Parties of the EEC in Paris (12 November 1982), quoted in The Times (13 November 1982), p. 3
1980s

War , World

“Militarism! Here is the monstrous leech that is incessantly sucking the blood of the people and its best energy! Here is the target for our attacks! We must put an end to barbarism, proclaim that the army is now a highly organized school of crime and that it exists solely to protect bourgeois capital and profits. We must not be deterred from proclaiming ourselves international socialists. We recognize no borders and no flags, we hate all steel, every institution that exist to kill men, waste energy, strangle the advance of the workers.”

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

Mussolini's article, (April 11, 1909), quoted in The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution, Jacob Talmon, University of California Press (1981) p. 487,
1900s

Men , Hate , People , School

“It should be underlined that while the democratic or state socialist believes that socialist governments will be peaceloving and nonviolent, the Marxist-Leninist believes this true of only the final, communist stage of stateless anarchy. The socialist transition period may well involve war with capitalist states, but while this inter-state war is to be avoided if at all possible in this age of nuclear weapons, the world-wide struggle against capitalism must be pursued by all means short of inter-state war. This would involve not only the arts of deception, disinformation, subversion, and demoralization, against capitalist states, but also terrorism and domestic wars through ‘national liberation fronts’. For the Marxist-Leninist, then, it is the communist system that is inherently peaceful, not the socialist intermediary state. This socialist stage means the purposeful, aggressive use of force and violence to pursue the final, global stage of communist peace and freedom.”

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

War , Age , World , Peace

“But American nationalism has been conditioned, to a large extent, by the "indoctrination" of the children of immigrants, inevitably coupled with a certain denigration of the Old World. Any German, or Italian, or American gentleman will naturally defend his country against patently unjust accusations—loyalty demands this; but he will not try to convince others that his nation has the highest qualities in the world, the most gifted inventors, the most profound philosophers, the best writers, the finest painters, the fastest trains, the most beautiful women. (This uncouth boasting is reserved for the traveling salesman after a third drink, or the likes of a National Socialist or a Russian Communist.)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 199

Women , Children , World , Beauty

“Obama is neither a socialist, nor a mere political accountant. He has some modest ideals, and may yet be an excellent president. But what is needed to revive liberal idealism is a set of new ideas on how to promote justice, equality and freedom in the world. Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev, assisted in the end of an ideology, which once offered hope, and inspired real progress, but resulted in slavery and mass murder. We are still waiting for a new vision, which will lead to progress, but this time, we hope, without tyranny.”

Ian Buruma (1951) Dutch writer and academic

What’s Left After 1989? http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/buruma31

World , Justice , Hope , Idea

“In recent years, demagogy, violence, cruelty, and vileness have seized a great country embarked on the path of socialist development. I refer, of course, to China. It is impossible without horror and pain to read about the mass contagion of anti-humanism being spread by "the great helmsman" and his accomplices, about the Red Guards who, according to the Chinese radio, "jumped with joy" during public executions of "ideological enemies" of Chairman Mao.
The idiocy of the cult of personality has assumed in China monstrous, grotesquely tragicomic forms, carrying to the point of absurdity many of the traits of Stalinism and Hitlerism. But this absurdity has proved effective in making fools of tens of millions of people and in destroying and humiliating millions of intelligent citizens.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Police Dictatorships

Pain , People , Fools , Intelligence

“When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country … this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (12 November 1968), quoted in The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy (2003) by Matthew J. Ouimet

Hostility , People , Problem , Country

“Yossarian — the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

“Our agrarian revolution has been a process in which the landlord class owning the land is transformed into a class that has lost its land, while the peasants who once lost their land are transformed into small holders who have acquired land, and it will be such a process once again. In given conditions having and not having, acquiring and losing, are interconnected; there is identity of the two sides. Under socialism, private peasant ownership is transformed into the public ownership of socialist agriculture; this has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place everywhere else. There is a bridge leading from private property to public property, which in philosophy is called identity, or transformation into each other, or interpenetration.”

Mao Zedong book On Contradiction

On Contradiction (1937)
Original: (zh-CN) 我们实行过的土地革命，已经是并且还将是这样的过程，拥有土地的地主阶级转化为失掉土地的阶级，而曾经是失掉土地的农民却转化为取得土地的小私有者。有无、得失之间，因一定条件而互相联结，二者具有同一性。在社会主义条件之下，农民的私有制又将转化为社会主义农业的公有制，苏联已经这样做了，全世界将来也会这样做。私产和公产之间有一条由此达彼的桥梁，哲学上名之曰同一性，或互相转化、互相渗透。

“We did not want bloodshed, for we are not bandits. We would not be socialists, if we were bandits. /…/ When the preacher of the truth meets the death penalty, well - proud and defiant, I will pay the price.”

August Spies (1855–1887) American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor

Translated from Swedish: http://www.kommunisterna.org/politik/texter/socialismens-lardomar/riv-galgarna

Death , Truth , Penalty

“The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population - the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians - in the work of organising a socialist economy.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, The Lenin Anthology
The State and Revolution (1917)

“[Mussolini] was not a theoretician but a tactician, whose intellectual eclecticism, a blend of anarchism and Marxism, as well as his emphasis on violence, resembled the ideology of the Russian Socialists-Revolutionaries.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 245

“He [Tolstoy] turned upon those who are produced by its [the modern world's] wrongs and condemned socialists, revolutionists, trade unionists, feminists, coöperators, and all reformers and menders of the present order, including charity organizationists and almoners. The most hopeless one of all in the present day world is "the good man," who lives in comfort, helps the needy, attends service, and is utterly impervious to any real religion.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 77

World , Religion , Help

“No Bolshevik, no Communist, no intelligent socialist has ever entertained the idea of violence against the middle peasants. All socialists have always spoken of agreement with them and of their gradual and voluntary transition to socialism.”

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

"Reply to a Peasant’s Question" (15 February 1919) http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/feb/14b.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 501.
1910s

Intelligence , Idea

“We are today living out the script for America and the world that was dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama's father. How do I know this? Because Obama says so himself. Reflect for a moment on the title of his book: it's not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father's dreams; he is writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father.Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s—a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash caused by his drunk driving). This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), Ch. 10: The Last Anti-Colonial

Books , World , Dreams , Cars

“The time to stop those who would loosen and weaken the fabric of our government is before they begin. The time for Americans to range themselves firmly, squarely and uncompromisingly behind American ideals is now. The great body of our people have an abiding faith in their own country. The time has come when they should supplement that faith with action. The question is whether America will allow itself to be degraded into a communistic and socialistic state, or whether it will remain American. Those who want to continue to enjoy the high estate of American citizenship will resist all attempts to encroach upon their liberties by encroachment upon the power of the courts.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People , Faith , Question , Time

“Let us look facts straight in the eye. World imperialism headed by its aggressive detachment, U. S. imperialism, is directing the course of its economy towards preparations for war. It is arming itself to the teeth. U. S. imperialism is rearming Bonn's Germany, Japan, and all its allies and satellites with all kinds of weapons. It has set up and perfected aggressive military organizations, it has established and continues to establish military bases all around the socialist camp. It is accumulating stocks of nuclear weapons and refuses to disarm, to stop testing nuclear weapons, and is feverishly engaged in inventing new means of mass extermination. Why is it doing all this? To go to a wedding party? No, to go to war against us, to do away with socialism and communism, to put the peoples under bondage.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

War , People , World , Communication

“If you love our country you are national, and if you love our people you are a socialist.”

Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists

Fascists, Michael Mann, Cambridge University Press (2006) p. 7.

Love , People , Country

“The world socialist system, which includes in its fold over 1 billion people with a big economic and military potential continually growing at unprecedented rates, has become today the decisive factor in the development of the world history. It exerts a tremendous influence on the world; it has become a great attractive and revolutionizing force. The world socialist system is showing with every passing day its indisputable superiority over the capitalist system. It has become the shield of all the progressive forces of the world, the impregnable bulwark of freedom and peace, democracy and socialism.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, 20th Party Anniversary Address

People , World , Peace , Democracy

“The question we must all ask ourselves is how Mr. Benn was able to come within striking distance of the very heart of our economic life in the first place… an important part of the answer must be that our industry, economic life and society have been so debilitated by 30 years of Socialistic fashions that their very weakness tempts further inroads. The path to Benn is paved with 30 years of interventions: 30 years of good intentions: 30 years of disappointments. These have led the collectivists to say that we are failing only because we are taking half measures. The reality is that for 30 years the private sector of our economy has been forced to work with one hand tied behind its back by government and unions. Socialist measures and Socialist legacies have weakened free enterprise.”

Keith Joseph (1918–1994) British barrister and politician

Speech in Upminster http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/displaydocument.asp?docid=110604 (22 June 1974)
1970s

Life , Disappointment , Fashion , Question

“A true socialist never hates people. He knows, that they are products of the great economical laws, which in the present society divides man into two nations of poor and rich… We socialists never hate specific individuals. But we hate the system - capitalism, militarism, reaction – and that system we scorn with a healthy, burning, eternal hatred.”

Ture Nerman (1886–1969) Swedish socialist

Socialist newspaper Folkets Dagblad - Politiken (24 April 1918)
Sourced quotes

Hate , People , Law

“As Prince Bismarck, in the ’60s, wanted to move the “Acheron” of socialism, … it was of course not love for socialism or knowledge of socialism that led Prince Bismarck to do this. He understood nothing about socialism at that time, and never did understand anything about it down to his death; in fact, he never had any conception of the moving forces of political and social life at all. There probably never lived at any time in any country a “statesman” who was less scientific, who had less knowledge, and who relied so purely on experience and a sort of half-gambler, half-peddler cunning, as Bismarck. Those offers to socialists place in the clearest light the untruthfulness of Prince Bismarck’s claim that he always regarded the social democracy as incompatible with the existence of the state. Bismarck wanted to use socialism for the purpose of breaking up and dissolving the bourgeois liberal opposition, especially the Progressive party. This, in itself, is the most conclusive proof that he had no conception of the real nature of socialism. Of course the fate of the boy magician was repeated. The elemental force which was conjured up grew over the head of the dabbler, and he did not get the best of socialism; socialism got the best of him.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Love , Life , Death , Fate

“I did not vote upon the Factory question. The fact is the Government are being whipped with a rod of their own pickling. They used the ten hours’ cry, and all other cries, to get into power, and now they find themselves unable to lay the devil they raised for the destruction of the Whigs. The trickery of the Government was kept up till the time of Ashley's motion, in the confident expectation that he would be defeated by the Whigs and Free Traders…The Whigs very basely turned round upon their former opinions to spite the Tories. The only good result is that no Government or party will in future like to use the factory question for a cry…One other good effect may be that men like Graham and Peel will see the necessity of taking anchor upon some sound principles, as a refuge from the Socialist doctrines of the fools behind them.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. W. Cobden (23 March 1844) on the Factory Act 1844, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 302.
1840s

Men , Fools , Confidence , Question

“The Social-Democrat's ideal should not be a trade union secretary. but a tribune of the people, able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it takes place, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; he must be able to group all these manifestations into a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; he must be able to take advantage of every petty event in order to explain his socialistic convictions and his Social-Democratic demands to all, in order to explain to all and every the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.”

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

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter Three, Section E, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)

People , World

“After mastering its internal divisions, National Socialist Germany has proceeded step by step to cast off its enslavement…. Nevertheless, the Jewish-internationalist capitalists in connection with socially reactionary classes in the Western States have successfully roused the world democracies against Germany.”

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

As quoted in The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh, p.1909
1940s

World , Democracy

“To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.”

J. B. S. Haldane book On Being the Right Size

"On Being the Right Size" in Possible Worlds (1928)

Men , Way , Business , Problem

“Any contemporary political re-statement of liberal and socialist goals must include as central the idea of a society in which all men would become men of substantive reason, whose independent reasoning would have structural consequences for their societies, its history and thus for their own life fates.”

C. Wright Mills book The Sociological Imagination

Source: The Sociological Imagination (1959), p. 174.

Life , Men , Fate , History

“The tragedy in the long history of the German people is that it has seldom had real leaders. Not that it lacked military leadership. What was lacking was political leadership, the political idea, the Weltanschauung (worldview) that National Socialism gives. The S. A. man as a political soldier is the bearer of this Weltanschauung, this National Socialist idea. Political soldiery is the foundation of the state.”

Viktor Lutze (1890–1943) SA Stabschef

Quoted in "The Educational Philosophy of National Socialism" - Page 174 - by George Frederick Kneller - 1941.

People , History , Idea

“If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Article for Daily Telegraph ("My Kind of Tory Party") (30 January 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102600
Shadow Secretary for Environment

Freedom

“It is above all over the question of the State that socialists are divided. Two main currents can be discerned in the factions that exist among us which correspond to differences in temperament as well as in ways of thinking, but above all to the extent that one believes in the coming revolution.
There are those, on the one hand, who hope to achieve the social revolution through the State by preserving and even extending most of its powers to be used for the revolution. And there are those like ourselves who see the State, both in its present form, in its very essence, and in whatever guise it might appear, an obstacle to the social revolution, the greatest hindrance to the birth of a society based on equality and liberty, as well as the historic means designed to prevent this blossoming. The latter work to abolish the State and not to reform it.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: The State — Its Historic Role (1897), I

Hope , Way , Birth , Question

“The external appearance of any construction projects that are created during the time of the National Socialist Reich must take on the sensibility of our time. Factories are the workplaces of our National Socialist racial comrades. Streets and highways carry the name of the Führer. Settlements today are not isolated communities, but rather parts of greater city-construction plans. Every work site must be properly located within its neighborhood and surrounding setting”

Fritz Todt (1891–1942) German engineer and senior Nazi figure

i.e., the natural world
Quoted in "Deutsche Technik", May 1938, p. 209.

World , Communication , Nature , Appearance

“If a 19th century capitalist Machiavelli had wished to cripple the socialist intelligentsia of the 20th century, he could have invented no more cogent weapon than the labour theory of value. Yet this theory was the invention, not of a defender of capitalism, but of its greatest critic: Karl Marx.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 13, Nothing To Lose But Their Minds, p. 270–271 (See also: Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VI, p. 58)

“On the nationalist-conservative Right… Hitler was portrayed for the most part as intransigent and irresponsible, a wild and vulgar demagogue, not a statesman, an obstacle to political recovery, the head of an extreme movement with menacing socialistic tendencies.”

Ian Kershaw (1943) British historian

Source: Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (1999), p. 412

Parting

“The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism' our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.”

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

"Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", (1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“The socialist is not a human, but an animal, because a human differs from an animal in this that he has moral values, and the Reds (socialists), as their program states, they disobey them.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: blog, 28 June 2007

Animals

“[V]oluntary exchange among individuals held morally responsible under the rule of law creates both prosperity and an unparalleled diversity of human choices. Such a model also has been a precondition of individuation and freedom. By contrast, regimes of central planning create poverty and occasion ineluctable developments toward totalitarianism and the worst abuses of power. Dynamic free-market societies, grounded in rights-based individualism, have altered the entire human conception of liberty and of dignity for formerly marginalized groups. The entire "socialist experiment," by contrast, ended in stasis; ethnic hatreds; the absence of even the minimal preconditions of economic, social, and political renewal; and categorical contempt for both individuation and minority rights. Our children do not know this true comparison.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Children , Law , Freedom

“As long as 1911, when I was still a member of the Socialist Party, I wrote that the Gordian knot of Trent could be cut only by the sword. At the same date I declared that war is usually the prelude to revolution. It was therefore easy for me, when the Great War broke out, to predict the Russian and the German revolutions.”

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

As quoted in Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933), p. 84, Interview took place between March 23 and April 4, 1932
1930s

War

“The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman’s speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss.”

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

Reported in James C. Humes, Speaker's Treasury of Anecdotes About the Famous (1978), p. 45, as a remark made in the House of Commons responding to a Laborite speech on the evils of free enterprise; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
Disputed

Loss

“Are we opposed to Prussian militarism? … We have been fighting it since the day the Socialist movement was born; and we are going to continue to fight it, day and night, until it is wiped from the face of the earth. Between us there is no truce—no compromise.”

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

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

Fight , Night

“We National Socialists have monopolized all resources and all our energies during the past seven years so as to be able to be equipped for the supreme effort of battle.”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Page 408 - Nuremberg, Germany - 1948

Effort , Past

“National Socialism did not make men unfree; unfreedom made men National Socialists.”

Milton Mayer (1908–1986) American journalist

Source: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-35 (1955), p. 277

Men

“The proletariat needs state power, the centralized organization of force, the organization of violence, for the purpose of crushing the resistance of the exploiters and for the purpose of leading the great mass of the population - the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the semi-proletarians - in the work of organizing a socialist economy.”

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

2.1, "The Eve of The Revolution", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)

“I have not the slightest doubt that the economic measures and the Socialist measures which one will find in countries of Eastern Europe, will become increasingly powerful against the uncoordinated, planless society in which the West is living at present.”

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

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1960/dec/15/south-west-africa in the House of Commons (15 December 1960)
Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

Country

“For Stirner, the social axiom of conservative, liberal, and socialist schools of political thought alike is in itself repressive: it disguises as potentially redemptive an order whose central function is inhibitory of the individual’s interests.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 55

School

“Socialism is, in its essence, an attack not only upon British enterprise, but upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils. A Free Parliament—look at that—a Free Parliament is odious to the Socialist doctrinaire.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 33
The Second World War (1939–1945)

“By abandoning the naval base at Singapore the Socialist Government has made it impossible for the British Navy to enter the Pacific, and consequently to afford the slightest assistance to Australia and New Zealand, no matter how terrible their need might be. Yet almost at the same time that the British Navy is stripped of its old power of defending the British Empire we know well that they would gladly hawk it round Europe to be the drudge of an international organization and fight in every quarrel but its own.”

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)

Time , Fight

“My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

On Pilgrimage (1948), p. 126

Love , Life , World , Failure

“The election [of 1919] indicated that the prevailing sentiment in the country was to the left and Mussolini acknowledge this face by still in 1920 calling himself a socialist, albeit a dissident. He continued to campaign for nationalization of land, workers’ participation in the running of factories and partial expropriation of capital,…”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 40

Country

“Bernie Sanders' election campaign had given rise to much hope. By daring to introduce a socialist perspective into the debate, Sanders initiated the sound politicization of public opinion, which is no more impossible in the United States than elsewhere. We can only deplore, under these conditions, Sanders' capitulation and his rallying to the support of Clinton.”

Samir Amin (1931–2018) Egyptian economist

The Election of Donald Trump https://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/amin301116.html (30 November 2016), Monthly Review Magazine (MRzine)

Hope , Support

“The fact of the modern national States or empires not having originated organically does not prevent their being organs of that great entity which we call civilised humanity, and which is much too extensive to be included in any single State. And, indeed, these organs are at present necessary and of great importance for human development. On this point Socialists can scarcely differ now. And it is not even to be regretted, from the Socialist point of view, that they are not characterised purely by their common descent. The purely ethnological national principle is reactionary in its results. Whatever else one may think about the race-problem, it is certain that the thought of a national division of mankind according to race is anything rather than a human ideal. The national quality is developing on the contrary more and more into a sociological function. But understood as such it is a progressive principle, and in this sense Socialism can and must be national. This is no contradiction of the cosmopolitan consciousness, but only its necessary completion, The world-citizenship, this glorious attainment of civilisation, would, if the relationship to national tasks and rational duties were missing, become a flabby characterless parasitism. Even when we sing "Ubi bene, ibi patria," we still acknowledge a "patria," and, therefore, in accordance with the motto, "No rights without duties"; also duties towards her.”

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) German politician

Bernstein, Eduard. "Patriotism, Militarism and Social-Democracy." (Originally published as: "Militarism." Social Democrat. Vol.11 no.7, 15 July 1907, pp.413-419.) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1907/07/patriotism.htm

World , Problem , Thinking , Sense