Socialism Quotes – 187 Thoughtful Reflections

"The similarity is astonishing, what can be collectively enforced in the name of ‘the good of the people’, formerly under socialism and now under capitalism, in such a small circle! I don't even want to say it out loud, but a little devil on my shoulder whispers almost mischievously in my ear – ‘Welcome back to the GDR’."

Katarina Witt

"I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers."

John D. Rockefeller

"The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every epoch, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has at its disposal the means of material production has at the same time at its disposal the means of intellectual production, so that, on average, the thoughts of those who lack the means of intellectual production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the ruling material conditions, the ruling material conditions conceived as ideas; that is, the conditions that make one class the ruling class, the ideas of its rule."

Marx/Engels

"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common except a single word: equality. The difference is considerable: while democracy seeks equality in freedom, socialism seeks equality in restriction and subjugation."

Alexis De Tocqueville

"Being a socialist means subordinating the self to the collective, sacrificing one's personality for the greater good. Socialism, in its deepest sense, is service. It is renunciation for the individual and demand for the whole."

Joseph Goebbels

"Capitalism possesses a vice: the unequal distribution of goods. Socialism, however, possesses a virtue: the equal distribution of misery."

Winston Churchill

"All parties in industrialized countries, whether right or left, will adopt the CO2 global warming theory. This is a unique opportunity to tax the air we breathe. Because they supposedly save the world from a heat death, politicians even receive applause for it. No party will resist this temptation."

Nigel Calder

"No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce."

Thomas Sowell

"Collectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people's money; which, of course, is why it is so popular."

G. Edward Griffin

"For the decline of capitalism to continue, that is to say, no revolutionary alternative is required, and certainly no masterplan of a better society displacing capitalism. Contemporary capitalism is vanishing on its own, collapsing from internal contradictions, and not least as a result of having vanquished its enemies - who, as noted, have often rescued capitalism from itself by forcing it to assume a new form. What comes after capitalism in its final crisis, now underway, is, I suggest, not socialism or some other defined social order, but a lasting interregnum - no new world system equilibrium a la Wallerstein, but a prolonged period of social entropy or disorder (and precisely for this reason a period of uncertainty and indeterminacy). It is an interesting problem for sociological theory whether and how a society can turn for a significant length of time into less than a society, a post-social society as it were, or a society lite, until it may or may not recover and again to become a society in the full meaning of the term."

Wolfgang Streeck

"...In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work."

Paul Farmer

"Equity is the only acceptable goal"

Paul Farmer

"There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact."

Oswald Spengler

"Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state."

Max Weber

"Rent control is one policy that economists universally would oppose. It is a grossly inefficient way of allocating housing space and, of course, it inhibits construction and creates the very thing it is supposed to alleviate. It is one of those things where people simply don't understand simple economics and, therefore, put in for political reasons what will damage the very people that it is designed to help. Minimum wage levels are another classic example."

James M. Buchanan

"Capitalism is going to deal itself out of existence, but before it does that, you're gonna pay ? for a latte, because inflation is going impoverish all of us before people get pissed off enough to realize that all of the last hundred years of economic progress was actually a shell game to create billionaires, while the great masses of people saw their standard of living eroded and destroyed."

Terence McKenna

"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt - until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties."

Gore Vidal

"It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people."

Gore Vidal