Quotes about socialist
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“My own view is that if, in a socialist society, the basic cultural skills are made widely available, and the channels of communication widened and cleared, as much as possible has been done in the way of preparation, and what then emerges will be an actual response to the whole reality, an so valuable.”

Raymond Williams book Culture and Society

Culture and Society (1958) p. 283

Way, Reality, Communication

“The aim of all socialist measures, even of those which appear outwardly as coercive measures, is the development and the securing of a free personality. Their more exact examination always shows that the coercion included will raise the sum total of liberty in society, and will give more freedom over a more extended area than it takes away.”

Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) German politician

Source: "Evolutionary Socialism" (1899) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1899/evsoc/index.htm, Chapter III, The Tasks and Possibilities of Social Democracy

Personality, Appearance, Freedom

“Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Nazism (2014)

“Had they thought of the relations between Imperialism and social reform? Could we continue this process of territorial expansion with our increasing Budgets? What we wanted was resolute and sustained attention to strengthening our industrial position. What was the use of conquering new markets when it was as much as we could do to hold the markets which we had already? (Cheers.) As to the Liberal policy...the day when the Liberal party forsook its old principles of peace, economy, and reform the Liberal party would have to disband and to disappear. (Cheers.) The Socialists would take its place. ... [I]f he were to choose between the Socialist and the Militarist, with all his random aims, his profusion of national resources, his disregard for the rights and feelings of other people, he himself declared he considered the Socialist's standards were higher and their means were no less wise.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Cheers.

Speech to the Palmerston Club, Oxford (9 June 1900), quoted in The Times (11 June 1900), p. 3
1900s

Peace, People, Feeling, Relation ships

“I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. I shall not settle until I achieve liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign, independent socialist republic.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Republican News http://larkspirit.com/hungerstrikes/bios/sands.html, (16 December 1978) Other writings

Country, Boy, Freedom

“I joined the socialist movement because I did not like the kind of society we had and wanted something better.”

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

As It Happened, 1954. Also cited in Anthony Crosland, The Future of Socialism (1956), (p.116).
Later life

“We have a president right now who doesn't consider himself a socialist but people call him a socialist as an insult. Are you concerned at all about framing yourself as this?”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

... "Not if we have the opportunity to describe what democratic socialism means. ... You have countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway ... which have had social democratic governments. ... In those countries, healthcare is a right for all people. ... Tuition is free. ... In those countries, governments are working for the middle class, rather than the billionaire class." Late Night with Seth Meyers (2 June 2015) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFAq-4Vv5c0 2010s, 2015

People

“It is an intolerable irony that societies that are anything but socialist should thus define what socialism is in the eyes of so many. It is an irony that has to be undone.”

Michael Harrington (1928–1989) American political writer

Source: Socialism: Past and Future (1989), p.67

“The whole justification for permitting the corporate executive to be selected by the stockholders is that the executive is an agent serving the interests of his principal. This justification disappears when the corporate executive imposes taxes and spends the proceeds for “social” purposes. He becomes in effect a public employe, a civil servant, even though he remains in name an employe of private enterprise. On grounds of political principle, it is intolerable that such civil servants—insofar as their actions in the name of social responsibility are real and not just window‐dressing—should be selected as they are now. If they are to be civil servants, then they must be selected through a political process. If they are to impose taxes and make expenditures to foster “social” objectives, then political machinery must be set up to guide the assessment of taxes and to determine through a political process the objectives to be served. This is the basic reason why the doctrine of “social responsibility” involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce resources to alternative uses.”

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

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

Way, Making love

“When I see the present Socialist Government denouncing capitalism in all its forms, mocking with derision and contempt the tremendous free enterprise capitalist system on which the mighty production of the United States is founded, I cannot help feeling that as a nation we are not acting honourably or even honestly.”

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

Churchill By Himself: The Definitive Collections of Quotations, ed. Richard Langworth, 2008, p. 124, (1948, 10 July) Woodford, Essex, Europe, 374)
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Feeling, Help

“I know that it is the Socialist idea that making profits is a vice, and that making large profits is something of which a man ought to be ashamed. I hold the other view. I consider that the real vice is making losses.”

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

House of Commons, 1 June 1937. Hansard, Vol 324, Col 883 https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1937/jun/01/finance-bill. The 1930s

Idea, Loss, Making love

“This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party.”

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

The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/nov/09.htm (November 1912) 1910s

“In the end, the “model” that came into existence in the USSR was not socialist but totalitarian. This is a serious matter to be reflected on by all who seriously aspire to progress for the benefit of the human race.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

“But what has been the experience of the Russian socialist movement up to now? The most important and fruitful changes in its tactical policy during the last ten years have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment.”

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

Leninism or Marxism? (1904)

Change

“Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation, of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ - who I think was the first socialist - only socialism can really create a genuine society.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Source: As quoted in Reformism or Revolution: Marxism and socialism of the 21st Century (Reply to Heinz Dieterich) https://books.google.it/books?id=YHN9DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT149&dq=%22Capitalism+is+the+way+of+the+devil+and+exploitation%22 (24 September 2006)

Way, Thinking, Christ

“The architects of the Constitution had the intention of making a republican and federal government which would endure with stability, insure justice, promote the general welfare and be proof against usurpation, either by the few and the rich or by the poor and the many. For the founding of a republic they had guides. For a federal system they had none. But they thoroughly believed that help could be found in the successes and failures of the past. They knew all about the ‘class struggle’—so, for that matter, did the Greek philosophers, although you would think from our young socialist friends that Karl Marx was the first person ever to notice it. They knew all about Fascism and its causes, although they called it by another name.”

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

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 52-53
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

Justice, Success, Past, Personality

“The production of wealth by private enterprise is called Capitalism. It is hard to call Capitalism one of the isms, because Capitalism is not a creed at all. Capitalism was not ‘invented’ by any sociologist or philosopher. Capitalists never called themselves that. The word was invented by socialists to describe what they hated.”

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

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 25

Wealth, Hate

“Our country is suffering from the lack of food. We don't have rice for the military. Our country is in a state of anarchy because of the dysfunctional food rationing system. The administration department is responsible for this mess, as well as the Party officials. The Party's Central Committee members have failed their duty in generating a revolutionary spirit, diminishing the Party's effectiveness. We must solve the food problem according to socialist principles, and we must not rely on individuals. If we let the people solve the problem on their own, only merchants and markets will prosper. Then, selfishness will rule our society and destroy our system of true equality.”

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

Reported speech at Kim Il Sung University in December 1996, as quoted in Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il (2012) by John H. Cha and K. J. Sohn. Domestic collections of Kim's works do not confirm the speech or the wording, but an April 1996 speech to the Central Committee began with similar observations, and a "state of anarchy" arising from privatization in former socialist countries was a theme in earlier works.
1990s

Selfishness, Country, Food, Suffering

“It is the place where Collectivist and Socialistic experiments are tried. It is the place where a new revolutionary spirit finds its instruments and collects its arms.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

On the London County Council; speech to the metropolitan division of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in the Queen's Hall, Langham Place (7 November 1894), quoted in The Times (8 November 1894), p. 4
1890s

“To realise that the socialist society is not the norm, evolved by material conditions, but the exception, imposed on immoral society by human will and social conscience, is not to emasculate our socialism, but to set ourselves a challenge.”

Richard Crossman (1907–1974) British Member of Parliament

‘Introduction’, New Fabian Essays (1952), p. 15

“We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

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

2019-01-05
Trump to Ocasio-Cortez: 'America will never be a socialist country'
Joel Gehrke
Washington Examiner
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/trump-to-ocasio-cortez-america-will-never-be-a-socialist-country
2019, January 2019

Country

“In reality, there is no truth in socialism, because it has never worked. Still smarting from the hard lessons of history, today's Marxist socialists have learned to swiftly bury truth and any truth-seekers, before they can become entombed themselves.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

“No Truth in Socialism: Why the ‘Crisis of Marxism’ Matters” https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/no_truth_in_socialism_why_the_crisis_of_marxism_matters.html American Thinker (Aug. 7, 2021)

History, Learning, Truth, Reality

“It's obvious that things are changing. When I was in high school and told people I was a socialist, they looked at me as if I were crazy. When I tell people I'm a socialist today, they just nod and go about their day - not a hint of revulsion.”

Bhaskar Sunkara (1989) American writer

Preface
The Socialist Manifesto (2019)

School, People, Change

“Communism is nothing but a grotesque distortion of true Socialist thought. We and we alone could become the genuine Socialists in Germany, or for that matter, in Europe.”

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

Source: Letter to Count E. Von Reventlow (mid 1920s), quoted in Joseph Goebbels: A Biography https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.185382/2015.185382.Joseph-Goebbels_djvu.txt, Curt Riess, Hollis and Carter, London (1949) p. 37

Communication

“All or most of the prophets were socialists at heart.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Heart

“I know that I can give you examples of failed Socialist economies until I'm blue in the face and you won't care. Because of course Socialism is inherently more moral, more altruistic than the evil, greedy, capitalist warmongering seen in the West.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

to be sorted

Evil

“The steps taken today serve to preserve the basic features of socialist renewal. All the reforms will be continued in an atmosphere of order, businesslike discussion and discipline, also economic reform.”

Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) Polish military officer and politician

Source: Excerpts of Martial law speech (14 December 1981)

“Because we are socialists we have felt the deepest blessings of the nation, and because we are nationalists we want to promote socialist justice in a new Germany.”

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

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

Justice

“Freedom is more important than what the DPS (Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro) and those who are with it offer.”

Zdravko Krivokapić (1958) Montenegrin politician and professor

Source: Zdravko Krivokapić (2021) cited in: " Montenegro’s opposition pulls no-confidence motion against government https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/montenegros-opposition-pulls-no-confidence-motion-against-government/" in Euractiv, 14 December 2021.

Freedom

“Since we are socialists, we must necessarily also be antisemites because we want to fight against the very opposite: materialism and mammonism... How can you not be an antisemite, being a socialist!”

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

Source: "Why We Are Anti-Semites," August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager. https://carolynyeager.net/why-we-are-antisemites-text-adolf-hitlers-1920-speech-hofbr%C3%A4uhaus

Fight

“By noon it was clear that the Socialists would have a majority.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War (1948–1953)
Source: On the (July 26, 1945) landslide electoral defeat that turned him out of office near the end of WWII, in The Second World War, Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy (1953), Chapter 40 (The End of My Account), p. 583.
Context: At luncheon my wife said to me, 'It may well be a blessing in disguise. 'I replied, 'At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.'

“Let them [Socialists] abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous, fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality... they will increase the well-being of the world.”

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

Early career years (1897–1929)
Source: Winston S. Churchill, His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, Vol. IV, p. 3821, (1926, 21 January)

Falseness, World

“But when the socialist and, even more, the syndicalist, began to propose his nostrums as medicine for the capitalist system, there appeared a diseased and corrupted form of socialism which found its neophytes in the oddest quarters.”

John Thomas Flynn (1882–1964) American journalist

Source: As We Go Marching (1944), p. 111

Appearance, Disease

“In everything we are destroyers – even in the instruments of destruction to which we turn for relief. The very socialism and internationalism through which our choked spirit seeks utterance, which seem to threaten your way of life, are alien to our spirit's demands and needs. Your socialists and internationalists are not serious. The charm of these movements, the attraction, such as it is, which they exercise, is only in their struggle: it is the fight which draws your gentile radicals.”

Maurice Samuel (1895–1972) novelist, translator and lecturer

You Gentiles (1924) Source: pp. 152-153 https://archive.org/details/you-gentiles-maurice-samuel-1924-217pgs-rel.sml/page/152/mode/1up

Drawing, Way, Fight, Life

“I think that within five or six months’ time there will be quite a few Socialists who will recognize that I am the only Socialist that there has been in Italy for the last five years; and I am not being paradoxical, even if I add that the Socialist Party on the whole is detestable.”

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

“Sacrifice, Work, and Production” Speech in Milan before the Fascio Milanese Combattimento (5 February 1920) p. 69
1920s, Mussolini as Revealed in his Political Speeches (November 1914—August 1923) (1923)

Time, Thinking

“The Socialists, and I am still one, although an exasperated one, never brought forward the question of irredentism, but left it to the Republicans. We are in favour of a national war. But there are also reasons, purely socialist in character, which spur us on towards intervention.”

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

“Mussolini the ‘Man of the War’” speech delivered at the Mazza, Parma (13 December 1914) p. 15
1920s, Mussolini as Revealed in his Political Speeches (November 1914—August 1923) (1923)

War, Question