Category: Thought

Nobody would work for starvation wages if he were not in a situation in which he preferred such wages to not working at all.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

There is a scale in the meaning of the word socialist. In France it means about the same thing as a communist, when one uses plain language. When one uses the language of Monsieur Drumont, it means a Jew. In England a socialist is equal to a French conservative republican. In America it means a thief. In Germany it means an ingenious individual of restricted financial resources, who generally fails to blow up some important personage with wet dynamite. In Italy a socialist is an anarchist pure and simple, who wishes to destroy everything existing for the sake of dividing a wealth which does not exist at all. It also means a young man who orders a glass of water and a toothpick at a cafe, and is able to talk politics for a considerable time on this slender nourishment.

A living dog is better than a dead lion.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

Blaming “greedy lenders” or even foolish borrowers begs the question. What institutional factors gave rise to all the foolish lending and borrowing in the first place? Why did the banks have so much money available to lend in the mortgage market — so much indeed that they could throw it even at applicants who lacked jobs, income, down payment money, and good credit?

Beware of averages. The average person has one breast and one testicle.

A law of spoliation may be passed and carried into effect, but in the event of its results becoming permanent, it runs the risk of destroying the government which has assumed the responsibility for it.

There are three words which Socialism must erase from the facades of our public buildings—the three words of the Republican motto:—

Liberty, because Socialism is a rule of tyranny and of police.

Equality, because it is a rule of class.

Fraternity, because its policy is that of the class war.