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Everything You Need To Know About Socialism in 20 Quotes
Townhall.com ^ | Jan 12, 2016 | John Hawkins

Posted on 01/12/2016 4:17:06 AM PST by Kaslin

1) "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher

2) "It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress." -- John Stuart Mill

3) "Socialism is when government's taking care of you, you send all your money to the government, the government decides how to spend it instead of letting the people spend it and make all those decisions." -- Bob Latta

4) "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." -- Adolf Hitler

5) "What distinguished Nazism from other brands of socialism and communism was not so much that it included more aspects from the political right (though there were some). What distinguished Nazism was that it forthrightly included a worldview we now associate almost completely with the political left: identity politics. This was what distinguished Nazism from doctrinaire communism, and it seems hard to argue the marriage of one leftist vision to another can somehow produce right-wing progeny. If this was how the world worked, we would have to label nationalist-socialist organizations like the PLO and Cuban Communist Party right-wing." -- Jonah Goldberg

6) "The goal of socialism is communism." -- Vladimir Lenin

7) "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." -- Bobby Jindal

8) "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Frederic Bastiat

9) "Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution." -- Ben Shapiro

10) "I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature." -- Sidney Hook

11) "In 1989, for two hours' labor at the minimum wage, an American worker could obtain, at a corner Sizzler, a feast more opulent, more nutritionally rich and gastronomically diverse than anything available to almost all the citizens of the socialist world (including the elite) at almost any price." -- David Horowitz

12) "In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy." -- David Horowitz

13) "I believe that all forms of socialism have been proven over time to result in a loss of both economic and civil liberties, with increasing poverty." -- John Mackey

14) "Socialism values equality more than liberty." -- Dennis Prager

15) "Socialism is for those who think most people are losers. Capitalism is for those who think most people can take care of themselves." -- John Hawkins

16) "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

17) "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

18) "The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau." -- Ludwig von Mises

19) "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

20) "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -- Winston Churchill


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: neighborliness; quotes; socialism; socialist; twenty
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1 posted on 01/12/2016 4:17:07 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

In order for quotes to be useful they must be find-able.

For example: When and where was the Hitler quote or the John Stewart Mill quote penned or spoken?

Where are your citations?

Without a citation the quotes are useless


2 posted on 01/12/2016 4:31:47 AM PST by Fai Mao (Just a tropical gardiner chatting with friends)
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To: Kaslin

LvM had the best one.


3 posted on 01/12/2016 4:36:04 AM PST by demshateGod (Trump for press secretary! Cruz for president!)
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To: Kaslin
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

It would be an interesting experiment to turn that quotation, without attribution, into manifesto, and to solicit signatures on a college campus or at the next large gathering of Democrats. What percentage of self-identified Democrats do you think would sign it? What percentage of BLM activists? Union organizers? Bernie Sanders supporters? Delegates to the next Democratic National Convention?

4 posted on 01/12/2016 4:40:27 AM PST by sphinx
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To: sphinx

Very good point.


5 posted on 01/12/2016 4:44:05 AM PST by pieceofthepuzzle
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To: Kaslin

Most Socialists believe that Stealing from anyone not in their own Group is acceptable, and that everyone lies and steals, cheats to have a better life. Socialists then are the bottom-feeders of society, and the worst kind of human existence without hold, honor or God. Essentially, they have forsaken humanity itself.


6 posted on 01/12/2016 4:57:45 AM PST by Jumper
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To: Kaslin

My hatred of Bolshevism and Bolsheviks is not founded on their silly system of economics or their absurd doctrine of an impossible equality. It arises from the bloody and devastating terrorism which they practice in every land into which they have broken, and by which alone their criminal regime can be maintained.

- Winston Churchill


7 posted on 01/12/2016 4:59:32 AM PST by Ouderkirk (To the left, everything must evidence that this or that strand of leftist theory is true)
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To: Fai Mao
Where are your citations?

C'mon now - you aren't seriously expecting Free Republic to be a scholarly publication, are you?

8 posted on 01/12/2016 5:00:58 AM PST by Quality_Not_Quantity (Democrat Drinking Game - Every time they mention a new social program, chug someone else's beer.)
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To: demshateGod
I agree...

" They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. "

Maybe we should call them Dictocrats.

9 posted on 01/12/2016 5:01:25 AM PST by Aevery_Freeman (Historians will refer to this administration as "The Half-Black Plague.")
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To: Kaslin

Any time ‘the State’ is more important, then ‘the individual’, is Socialism.

Any time you cannot do ‘something’, without a permit, license, certificate, or any kind of paper signed by any human sitting in an office, somewhere, is Socialism.

Lastly, anything that is spelled out in plain English, in The Bill of Rights, and is being discussed by politicians, is the harbinger of Socialism.


10 posted on 01/12/2016 5:02:28 AM PST by Terry L Smith
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To: Fai Mao

This was written by John Hawkins at TownHall, not Kaslin. He has been a contributer to TownHall for a while, so I suspect he could provide sources.

Or they could be apocryphal.

But they all have the ring of truth.


11 posted on 01/12/2016 5:06:17 AM PST by rlmorel ("Irrational violence against muslims" is a myth, but "Irrational violence against non-muslims" isn't)
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To: Aevery_Freeman

I think just calling them “Democrats” would be sufficient!


12 posted on 01/12/2016 5:07:10 AM PST by rlmorel ("Irrational violence against muslims" is a myth, but "Irrational violence against non-muslims" isn't)
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To: rlmorel

Yeah I read the original.

If he’d been in my class I’d have failed him for a lack of citations even though I agree with his point


13 posted on 01/12/2016 5:09:43 AM PST by Fai Mao (Just a tropical gardiner chatting with friends)
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ping


14 posted on 01/12/2016 5:11:22 AM PST by mykroar ("Never believe anything until it has been officially denied." - Otto von Bismarck)
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To: Kaslin

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” —Adolf Hitler

This quote is a matter of contention by historical researchers of Nazism and the Third Reich.

The idea that it was attributed to Hitler is indeed questionable. There are some that have stated in publications that it was from a May Day speech given in 1927 which has no historical proof of transcript or recording. That may indeed be correct.

However Gregor Strasser had a very similar quote that is nearly identical in sentiment but not in wording.

“We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system ! And with my inclination to practical action it seems obvious to me that we have to put a better, more just, more moral system in its place, one which, as it were, has arms and legs and better arms and legs than the present one!”

“Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future” - by Gregor Strasser - 1926 June 15

Obviously Strassers quote precedes Hitler’s quote by almost a year if dates of the timeline are accurate.

The far left aspects of the Nazi party were largely eliminated during the Night of the Long Knives when the SS took out the NSDAP and the brown shirts.

That does not at all eliminate the socialist aspect of the Third Reich or the Nazi party. It was more or less a purge of the near communist aspects of it and replacing it with the socialist and crony capitalism aspects.


15 posted on 01/12/2016 5:33:31 AM PST by PittsburghAfterDark (The American media: We do what the Soviet media did without the guns to our head.)
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To: Fai Mao
Where are your citations?
Without a citation the quotes are useless

My sister had a Chevy Citation and it was useless.

16 posted on 01/12/2016 6:08:07 AM PST by fungoking (Tis a pleasure to live in the Ozarks)
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To: fungoking

Very good.


17 posted on 01/12/2016 6:20:23 AM PST by KnutKase (VRWC member since 1988)
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To: Fai Mao

18 is from the book called Bureaucracy by Von Mises


18 posted on 01/12/2016 6:28:52 AM PST by I got the rope
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To: Kaslin

“This redistribution of wealth business is trickier than I thought!”

- John Cleese, as a Robin Hood-type character in Monty Python’s Flying Circus.


19 posted on 01/12/2016 7:05:03 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: fungoking

LOL


20 posted on 01/12/2016 7:36:57 AM PST by simpson96
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