Socialist Revolution Quotes & Sayings

As liberals, men like Richter viewed socialism as the great modern counter-revolution, and believed that the achievement of the socialist goal would lead both to appalling poverty and state absolutism. There was nothing in the socialist doctrine of the time that would suggest otherwise. — Ralph Raico

The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph. — Mao Zedong

What's the difference between a communist or socialist and a progressive? Revolution or evolution? One requires a gun and the other eats away slowly. — Glenn Beck

More people died as a result of the tiny abortive Easter Uprising against British rule in Ireland (1916) than died as a result of political violence in Germany during the entire National Socialist revolution. — Adolf Hitler

Furthermore, the revolutionary parties in all countries gave public utterance to the socialist principle of international peace that must be preserved at all hazards, even to the extent of revolt and revolution at home. The — Jack London

I don't really have any positive vision of the future, don't know what kind of world I'd someday like to live in or if it's even possible to achieve something better than this. I only know that the billionaires are attacking us, again and again taking measures that serve no other purpose than to increase their own wealth and debase all other aspects of life. And when you are attacked you must fight back, in whatever way you can. — Jacob Wren

The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution - particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements — Emma Goldman

In our Revolution we believe that we have broken the chain of a consumer economy based on imports, and we are free to decide our destiny . And in order to realize the interests of the Somali people, their achievement of a better life, the full development of their potentialities and the fulfilment of their aspirations, we solemnly declare Somalia to be a Socialist State. — Siad Barre

More than one branch of the avant-garde, claiming to break with the bourgeois vision and mode of production, remains tied to it in spite of its denials and ex-communications. We are far from having overcome bourgeois thought or practices, despite the socialist "intermission" between the Russian revolution and the collapse of the Berlin wall. The avant-garde has lost its radical nature. On the other hand, "bourgeois theatre" is sometimes subtle enough to flirt with the avant-garde or to make "intelligent boulevard theatre. — Patrice Pavis

Fellow workers and peasants, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the working people, with the working people, and for the working people. And for this revolution of the working people, by the working people, and for the working people we are prepared to give our lives. — Fidel Castro

On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don't want to shoot him.
I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don't want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again. — Jacob Wren

I think anytime we talk about transforming in capitalist society, we are talking about a process not a particular event so you can't talk about a socialist revolution. — Cornel West

Capitalism has been fully restored in Yugoslavia, as is well-known, but this capitalism knows how to disguise. Yugoslavia portrays itself as a socialist state, but of a special kind, as the world has never seen it before! The Titoites even boast that their state has nothing in common with the first socialist state which emerged from the socialist October Revolution and which was founded by Lenin and Stalin on the basis of the scientific theory of Marx and Engels. — Enver Hoxha

The dictatorship of the proletariat and the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party are indispensable conditions for the triumph of the Socialist revolution and the building of Socialism. — Nikita Khrushchev

Of course, Kafka doesn't see himself as a sort of party. He doesn't even pretend to be revolutionary, whatever his socialist sympathies may be. He knows that all the lines link him to a literary machine of expression for which he is simultaneously the gears, the mechanic, the operator, and the victim. So how will he proceed in this bachelor machine that doesn't make use of, and can't make use of, social critique? How will he make a revolution?
He will act on the German language such as it is in Czechoslovakia. Since it is a deterritorialized language in many ways, he will push the deterritorialization farther, not through intensities, reversals and thickenings of the language but through a sobriety that makes language take flight on a straight line, anticipates or produces its segmentations. Expression must sweep up content; the same process must happen to form ... It is not a politics of pessimism, nor a literary caricature or a form of science fiction. — Gilles Deleuze

Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government. — Elliott Abrams

You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying. — Ernest Mandel

Democratic Socialism devolves into totalitarian Socialism and eventually into full on Communism as people resist statism. — A.E. Samaan

On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society. On one hand we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the socialist revolution ... It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers ... One is the loss of its mass character, the other the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform. — Rosa Luxemburg

With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power. — Emma Goldman

How rapid will be the development toward this higher phase of Communism when each shall receive according to
his needs? "That, we do not and cannot know ... We have no data that allow us to solve these questions." "For the
sake of greater clarity," Lenin affirms with his customary arbitrariness, "it has never been vouchsafed to any
socialist to guarantee the advent of the higher phase of Communism." It can be said that at this point freedom
definitely dies. From the rule of the masses and the concept of the proletarian revolution we first pass on to the idea
of a revolution made and directed by professional agents. The relentless criticism of the State is then reconciled with
the necessary, but provisional, dictatorship of the proletariat, embodied in its leaders. Finally, it is announced that
the end of this provisional condition cannot be foreseen and that, what is more, no one has ever presumed to promise
that there will be an end. — Albert Camus

Taken as a whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party embraces the two stages, i.e., the democratic and the socialist revolutions, which are two essentially different revolutionary processes, and the second process can be carried through only after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society. — Mao Zedong

All the parties of capitalist society, all its moralists and all its sycophants will perish beneath the debris of the impending catastrophe. The only party that will survive is the party of the world socialist revolution ... — Leon Trotsky

Film then does not promote socialist revolution in any consistent way. — Mark Poster

You cannot just have a socialist revolution in Norwood and nowhere else. — Ken Livingstone

We are not utopians, we do not "dream" of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and accountants". — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

He's a bar-room socialist, if that's what you mean. Beer and revolution go in, piss come out — Pat Barker

To call oneself a libertarian marxist today is not to look backwards but to be committed to the future. The libertarian marxist is not an academic but a militant. He is well aware that it is up to him to change the world - no more, no less. History throws him on the brink. Everywhere the hour of the socialist revolution has sounded. Revolution - like landing on the moon - has entered the realm of the immediate and possible. Precise definition of the forms of a socialist society is no longer a utopian scheme. The only utopians are those who close their eyes to these realities. — Daniel Guerin

Our Party's Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People's Army. — Kim Jong Il

It is a proof of the divergence of the tendencies of the socialist and the bourgeois pictures of history - and from now on there will be two distinct historical cultures running side by side without ever really fusing - that people who have been brought up on the conventional version of history and know all about the Robespierrist Terror during the Great French Revolution, should find it an unfamiliar fact that the Terror of the government of Thiers executed, imprisoned or exiled more people - the number has been estimated at a hundred thousand - in that one week of the suppression of the [Paris] Commune [of 1871] than the revolutionary Terror of Robespierre had done in three years. — Edmund Wilson

The economic prerequisites for the socialist revolution are fully matured in the US. The political premises are likewise far more advanced than might appear on the surface. — James P. Cannon

Any conception of socialism defined in national terms, within so extreme and predatory an oppressor nation as the US, is a view that leads in practice to a fight for particular privileged interest and is a very dangerous ideology. Active combat against empire is the only foundation for socialist revolution in the oppressor nation. — Weather Underground

And you cannot have a socialist revolution commandeered from the top, ordered around by some omniscient leader or group of leaders. — Ernest Mandel

Socialist revolution aims at liberating the productive forces. The changeover from individual to socialist, collective ownership in agriculture and handicrafts and from capitalist to socialist ownership in private industry and commerce is bound to bring about a tremendous liberation of the productive forces. Thus, the social conditions are being created for a tremendous expansion of industrial and agricultural production. — Mao Zedong

The total liberation and unification of Africa under an All-African Socialist Government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries throughout the world. It is an objective which when achieved, will bring about the fulfillment of the aspirations of Africans and people of African descent everywhere. It will at the same time advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution. — Kwame Nkrumah

For virtually all the socialist revolutions of the twentieth century, it was not a crisis of the capitalist system, but imperialist war that pushed old orders into crisis... — S.A. Smith

LEFTISTS EAT THEIR CHILDREN: The poets, artists, and radicals are murdered first once the "revolution" actually comes about. — A.E. Samaan

The struggle for socialism is the struggle for proletarian (working class) democracy. Proletarian democracy is not the crown of socialism. Socialism is the result of proletarian democracy. To the degree that the proletariat mobilizes itself and the great masses of the people, the socialist revolution is advanced. The proletariat mobilizes itself as a self-acting force through its own committees, unions, parties, and other organizations. — C.L.R. James

The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only 'ripened'; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. — Leon Trotsky

Which is worse? Lust for the purchasing power of money, or the kind of lust that covets power over others? Let the history of 20th Century socialist revolutions answer that question. — A.E. Samaan

Ralph Miliband was a socialist intellectual of great integrity. He belonged to a generation of socialists formed by the Russian revolution and the Second World War, a generation that dominated left-wing politics for almost a century. — Tariq Ali

It is not to save capitalism that we fight in Russia ... It is for a revolution of our own. ... If Europe were to become once more the Europe of bankers, of fat corrupt bourgeoisies we should prefer Communism to win and destroy everything. We would rather have it all blow up than see this rottenness resplendent. Europe fights in Russia because it [i.e., Fascist Europe] is Socialist. what interests us most in the war is the revolution to follow The war cannot end without the triumph of Socialist revolution. — Leon Degrelle