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Millions of words have been written about socialism. Worse yet, millions of lives have been sacrificed to the delusions of socialism and Marxism.

While there are so many great quotes to choose from on this topic, the following brief quotes make for a nice sample.

50 Quotes on Socialism

“Socialism means slavery.” Lord Acton

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” Aristotle

“When the law is used to take from some and give to others, it ceases to protect liberty and becomes an instrument of plunder. That is not justice, it is legal plunder.” Frédéric Bastiat

“The man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at 40 he has no head.” Aristide Briand

“Consider the following progression:
1. On a dark street, a man draws a knife and demands my money for drugs.
2. Instead of demanding my money for drugs, he demands it for the Church.
3. Instead of being alone, he is with a bishop of the Church who act as bagman.
4. Instead of drawing a knife, he produces a policeman who says I must do as he says.
5. Instead of meeting me on the street, he mails me his demand as an official agent of the government.
If the first is theft, it is difficult to see why the other four are not also theft. Expropriation is wrong not because its causes are wrong, but because it is a violation of the Eighth Commandment: Thou shalt not steal.” J. Budziszewski

“Those of us who study the papers and the parliamentary speeches with proper attention must have by this time a fairly precise idea of the nature of the evil of Socialism. It is a remote Utopian dream impossible of fulfilment and also an overwhelming practical danger that threatens us at every moment.” G. K. Chesterton

“What’s worthwhile to point out, first and last, is that Socialism is a tyranny; that it is inevitably, even avowedly and almost justifiably, a tyranny. It’s the pretence that government can prevent all injustice by being directly responsible for practically anything that happens.” G. K. Chesterton

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Winston Churchill

“I reject as impracticable the insane Socialist idea that we could have a system whereby the whole national production of the country, with all its infinite ramifications, should be organised and directed by a permanent official, however able, from some central office. The idea is not only impossible, but unthinkable. If it was even attempted it would produce a most terrible shrinkage and destruction of productive energy.” Winston Churchill

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill

“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” Alexis de Tocqueville

“There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.” Will Durant

“The best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” Benjamin Franklin

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists.” Friedrich Hayek

“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

“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

“People start to yawn when you warn them about a move toward socialism. It seems abstract. But if you discuss the issues that arise from high taxes, oppressive regulation, seizure of private property, and dictating of individual behaviour, people understand them, and they reject them.” Charlie Kirk

“Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.” Richard John Neuhaus

“The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country.” Lyn Nofziger

“Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.” Gary North

“Yet it is as a kind of religion that socialists most often justify their beliefs. Seldom do they claim that the superiority of socialism lies in its works, its practicality, its proven fruits. Nearly always they justify it in terms of its vision… Quite commonly, socialists are prepared to admit that democratic capitalism is more productive, more efficient, and far less vicious in practice than socialist theory would lead one to expect; in short, it works better. They rest the case for socialism on its supposed moral superiority over democratic capitalism.” Michael Novak

“There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as ‘caring’ and ‘sensitive’ because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head.” P. J. O’Rourke

“Socialism borrows the compassionate aims of Christianity while rejecting its insistence that kindness not be coerced or forced.” John Piper

“Socialism spends the money that capitalism creates.” Dennis Prager

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.” Ayn Rand

“A socialist is someone who has read Lenin and Marx. An anti-socialist is someone who understands Lenin and Marx.” Ronald Reagan

“Socialism only works in two places: Heaven – where they don’t need it and hell – where they already have it.”  Ronald Reagan

“Free people are different people, so they earn different incomes. Our talents and abilities are not identical. We don’t all work as hard. And even if we all were made equal in wealth tonight, we’d be unequal in the morning because some of us would spend it and some of us would save it. To make us economically equal, bureaucrats with guns would have to force us to be what we aren’t.” Lawrence Reed

“It is a common misconception that socialism is about helping poor people. Actually, what socialism does is create poor people, and keep them poor. And that’s not by accident. Under capitalism, rich people become powerful. But under socialism, powerful people become rich.” Glenn Reynolds

“The immorality or absurdity of Socialist doctrines are patent. But one difficulty in arguing with professed Socialists, both sinister and merely dreamy, is that they invariably suffer from great looseness of thought; for if they did not keep their faith nebulous, it would at once become abhorrent in the eyes of any upright and sensible man.” Teddy Roosevelt

“While I would not argue that capitalism as an economic system is inherently more Christian than socialism … it does seem to me that capitalism is more dependent on Christianity than socialism is. For in order for capitalism to work — in order for it to produce a good and a stable society — the traditional Christian virtues are essential.” Antonin Scalia

“The transformation of charity into legal entitlement has produced donors without love and recipients without gratitude.” Antonin Scalia

“The problem with capitalism is capitalists. The problem with socialism is socialism.” Willi Schlamm

“The great intellectual advantage of socialism is obvious. Through its ability to align itself with ideals that everyone can recognise, socialism has been able to perpetuate the belief in its moral purity, despite crime upon crime committed in its name. That a socialist revolution may cost millions of lives, that it may involve the wilful murder of an entire class, the destruction of a culture, the elimination of learning and the desecration of art, will leave not the slightest stigma on the doctrines with which it glorifies its actions.” Roger Scruton

“Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalises thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren’t about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?” Ben Shapiro

“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

“A socialist is somebody who doesn’t have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.” George Bernard Shaw

“Socialism always attacks three basic social institutions: religion, the family, and private property. Religion, because it offers a rival authority to the state; the family, because it means a rival loyalty to the state; and property, because it means material independence of the state.” Joseph Sobran

“The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty.” Thomas Sowell

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Even countries that were once more prosperous than their neighbours have found themselves much poorer than their neighbors after just one generation of socialistic policies.” Thomas Sowell

“What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.” Thomas Sowell

“America is now a land that rewards failure – at the personal, corporate, and state level. If you reward it, you get more of it. If you reward it as lavishly as the federal government does, you’ll get the Radio City Christmas Special of Failure, on ice and with full supporting orchestra. The problem is that, in abolishing failure, you abolish the possibility of success, and guarantee only a huge sucking statist swamp.” Mark Steyn

“No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every aspect.” Margaret Thatcher

“For the socialist, each new discovery revealed a ‘problem’ for which the repression of human activity by the state was the only ‘solution’.” Margaret Thatcher

“Socialists have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited.” Margaret Thatcher

“The worst enemy of socialism is not capitalism. It is reality.” Margaret Thatcher

“Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.” Ludwig von Mises

“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

“The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.” Walter Williams

“Many who claim to love Jesus with their theology hate the poor with their economics.” Douglas Wilson

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Originally published at CultureWatch.

Image via CultureWatch.