SOCIALISM QUOTES III

quotations about socialism

In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.

GEORGE ORWELL

preface to the Ukrainian edition, Animal Farm


While it's clear that young people increasingly view socialism in a positive light, it's also clear that many of them are uneducated about what it entails, or the impact it's had throughout history.

CABOT PHILLIPS

"Students love socialism!... whatever that is", Campus Reform, July 16, 2017


By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.

IAN MCEWAN

City Limits, May 27, 1983


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. The teachings about this society are called socialism.

VLADIMIR LENIN

"To the Rural Poor", Collected Works


Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.

ZYGMUNT BAUMAN

Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman

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Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Daily Telegraph, June 16, 1992


Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.

JOSE ANTONIO VIERA GALLO

foreword, Energy and Equity


Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse.

LEN DEIGHTON

Funeral in Berlin


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

Ideology: An Introduction


For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

"The Case for Socialism", In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

Tags: Bertrand Russell


To get rid of mosquitoes you must drain the pools on the lowlands, and to get rid of socialists you must drain off injustice from the slums.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.

ÉMILE DURKHEIM

Le socialisme

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It wasn't idealism that made me, from the beginning, want a more secure and rational society. It was an intellectual judgement, to which I still hold. When I was young its name was socialism. We can be deflected by names. But the need was absolute, and is still absolute.

RAYMOND WILLIAMS

Loyalties

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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

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The right still denounces socialism as an economic system that will lead to misery and privation, but with less emphasis on the political authoritarianism that often went hand in hand with socialism in power. This may be because elites today do not have democratic rights at the forefront of their minds -- perhaps because they know that the societies they run are hard to justify on those terms.

BHASKAR SUNKARA

"Socialism's Future May Be Its Past", New York Times, June 26, 2017


We can't ignore socialism's loss of innocence over the past century. We may reject the version of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as crazed demons and choose to see them as well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis, but we must work out how to avoid their failures.

BHASKAR SUNKARA

"Socialism's Future May Be Its Past", New York Times, June 26, 2017


The whole problem with Communism and Socialism is summed up in this old Polish proverb: "If I lie down , I get 1000 kopeks a month. If I stand up I get 1000 kopeks a month. Why stand up?"

REVELGEN

"A reply to Tiietso Makhele -- in reality, Socialism is a dead duck in SA", News24, August 10, 2017


The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man.

ERICH FROMM

On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying No to Power

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The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.

SIMONE WEIL

Oppression and Liberty

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To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

OSCAR WILDE

Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889

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