quotations about socialism
A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
LUDWIG VON MISES
Human Action
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
GEORGE ORWELL
The Road to Wigan Pier
People came from far and near
To buy poison and tears
The decor was delectable
The service impeccable
It was expensive -- what isn't?
It sold black plague and socialism
There was no reason to exist
If you weren't on the mailing list
FUTURE BIBLE HEROES
"Death Opened a Boutique"
Anyone who objects to any government whatsoever as a form of socialism ought not to pull that socialist lever in their home, the one that makes their waste disappear in a whirlpool into the socialized sewage treatment plant.
JOHN MÉDAILLE
The Distributist Review, August 31, 2009
But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards 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 nasty.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Alarms and Discursions
Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
KARL MARX
The Communist Manifesto
It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with "I," "me," "mine," that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything, provided that we regard nothing as property. And not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else's.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Perennial Philosophy
Socialism is like Neil Diamond music. It's not good and belongs in the past, yet there's a group of people who think that it will eventually catch on if only they keep playing it.
JEFFREY EVAN BROOKS
attributed, "Socialism: The Next Social Revolution", Alternate History Discussion Board, October 12, 2013
Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean--power over people, power to the State.
MARGARET THATCHER
speech to Conservative Central Council, March 15, 1986
Democracy is the road to socialism.
KARL MARX
attributed, Communism
If Socialism is what its friends say it is, it should be commended; if it is what its enemies say it is, it should be condemned.
FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
Socialism is also unselfishness embraced as an axiom.
ROGER KIMBALL
The New Criterion
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
Popular Government
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labour... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
"Why Socialism?", Monthly Review, May 1949
The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shall not covet," and "Thou shall not steal," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.
JOHN ADAMS
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government
This isn't new. Those who favor socialism always make the moral case for it. The truth is, maybe they actually believe in it, but in the real world, socialism harms, it weakens the economies of countries that have tried it. It just does. Weaker economies hurt everybody in them. Socialism kills incentive, opportunity, freedom. It is the opposite of what America is all about. Look, socialism always harms the people it claims to help the most. It handicaps them, leaving them weaker, less self-determined, less free. We should have this debate out in the open.
BOBBY JINDAL
The Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2015
To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.
OSCAR WILDE
Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889
We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
"Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom", September 1867
As we know, socialism is calculational chaos. Rational appraisement and allocation are eternally elusive. It is a gigantic negative-sum game in which each player quickly grabs a piece of the pie, and all the while the pie shrinks before the players' eyes.
LARRY J. SECHREST
Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture at the Austrian Scholars Conference in Auburn, Alabama, "The Anti-Capitalists: Barbarians at the Gate", March 15, 2008
Democrat Socialism, like Nationalist Socialism, is nothing more than Marxist Socialism repackaged.
MARK ALEXANDER
"Tear Down the University of Virginia!", The Patriot Post, August 14, 2017