quotations about socialism
Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
EARL WARREN
Address to National Press Club in Washington DC, April 1953
I am a Socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, Socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for co-operation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality, not because it wants people to be the same but because only through equality in our economic circumstances can our individuality develop properly.
TONY BLAIR
maiden speech as MP for Sedgefield, July 6, 1983
'87 socialism gave way to socialising
so put your hands up in the air
once more the North is rising
PULP
"Last Day of the Miners Strike"
In seeking greater justice and equality in economic conditions, Socialism rests on a strong moral basis; but in seeking no more than greater material ease and comfort, it betrays the presence of mortality.
FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER
attributed, Why I Am Opposed to Socialism
Socialism provides safety in numbers. And that's OK, if you don't mind trading your name--your identity and individualism--for a number.
JAROD KINTZ
99 Cents for Some Nonsense
Here in Jacksonville there's a road called Commonwealth Blvd., and today as I was driving on it, I realized how socialist the name sounds.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book Has No Title
Either this organisation of injustice with its entire machine of oppressive laws and privileged institutions, must disappear, or else the proletariat is condemned to eternal slavery. This is the quintessence of the Socialist idea, whose germs can be found in the instinct of every serious thinking worker.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
The Policy of the Internationl: to which is added an essay on "The Two Camps"
Socialism, when the last word is said, is merely a new economic and political system whereby more men can get food to eat.
JACK LONDON
The Human Drift
Socialism annihilates family life, for instance. With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. This is part of the programme. Individualism accepts this and makes it fine. It converts the abolition of legal restraint into a form of freedom that will help the full development of personality, and make the love of man and woman more wonderful, more beautiful, and more ennobling.
OSCAR WILDE
"The Soul of Man Under Socialism", The Essays of Oscar Wilde
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
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
The basic problem I really have is that whenever I meet leftists in the socialist and Marxist movements, I'm called a petit-bourgeois individualist. I'm supposed to shrink after this. Usually I'm called petit-bourgeois individualist by students, and by academicians, who've never done a days work life [sic] in their entire biography, whereas I have spent years in factories and the trade unions, in foundries and auto plants. So after I have to swallow the word petit-bourgeois, I don't mind the word individualist at all!
MURRAY BOOKCHIN
attributed, Anarchism in America
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
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in the House of Commons, "Demobilisation", October 22, 1945
The socialist "revolutionaries" respond the way they always have: they try to save the revolution by exterminating political freedom.
ROBERT TRACINSKI
"Why Is The New York Times Trying To Rehabilitate Communism?", The Federalist, August 3, 2017
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
Stripped down to its essence, and returned to its roots, socialism is an ideology of radical democracy. In an era when liberties are under attack, it seeks to empower civil society to allow participation in the decisions that affect our lives. A huge state bureaucracy, of course, can be just as alienating and undemocratic as corporate boardrooms, so we need to think hard about the new forms that social ownership could take.
BHASKAR SUNKARA
"Socialism's Future May Be Its Past", New York Times, June 26, 2017
The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society -- we are on the eve of universal change.
EUGENE V. DEBS
open letter to the American Railway Union, Chicago Railway Times, January 1, 1897
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
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech at the Scottish Unionist Conference, Perth, Scotland, May 28, 1948