Mstislav Rostropovich Quotes

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

I can understand Communism, but not Socialism.

Capitalism works. In the end, socialism imploded on itself. Communism imploded on itself. Ultimately jihadism will implode on itself, if we stay in the fight and stay on offense because failed philosophies don't work, there's no future.

Communists are frustrated capitalists.

A socialist is someone who has read Lenin and Marx. An anti-socialist is someone who understands Lenin and Marx.

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.

The most eloquent eulogy of capitalism was made by its greatest enemy. Marx is only anti-capitalist in so far as capitalism is out of date.

Capitalism works better than it sounds, while socialism sounds better than it works.

The word "Capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.

I would say I was still a Marxist - which is not to be confused with being a Communist. Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism.

I've never said I'm a communist.

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

Our battle is against the bourgeoisie as the enemy of German Socialism and the saboteur of national freedom.

Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak

Communism can't survive the captivating allure of capitalism.

I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.

I'm a Marxist.

I can't understand Karl Marx, so how can I be a Communist?

Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery . Capitalism is but the gentlemen's method of slavery.

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.

It is the basic principle of Marxism that any attempt to reconcile capital and labor so that they both co-operate in peace and prosperity is a betrayal of communism.