William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes

What I experienced in Cuba, I have become a student of what, how communism operates.

I believe that the madness of Communism would be the sole victor.

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

Its [Communism's] unfortunate association with violence encourages a certain evil tendency in human beings.

If the Russians claim they are Socialist, this is just, I would say, a lie. They have no socialism at all. They have what I would call a state capitalism.

Communism has served us ill in having us swap a living brotherhood for what looks to have the features of the coldest of all chill abstractions.

There has never been a communism that worked. They were all dictatorships or oligarchies, every single one.

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.

One thing that I am sure of, and which I can answer truthfully, is that whatever the contingencies that may arise here, wherever I am there will be no communism.

Socialism is a dead horse.

Communism was something so hideous that you had to be an exceptional conformist or a fool not to see the evil around you.

I always thought communism was crap, really.

Socialism is communism without the firing squad.

Socialism and communism are now so near each other that there is hardly any difference between them. In the past they differed from each other as does liberalism from democracy

Socialism was embraced by the greater part of the intelligentsia as the apparent heir of the liberal tradition: therefore it is not surprising that to them the idea of socialism's leading to the opposite of liberty should appear inconceivable.

Socialism and freedom are not compatible, regardless of repeated convincings.

We are not communists.

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

Admittedly communism has not been achieved in Russia. State socialism has been built.

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

Socialism is like a dream. Sooner or later you wake up to reality.

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.

We have not yet built a communist society.It is not so easy to build such a society.

In Democracy, man exploits man; in Communism, it's the other way round.

Communism is a form of society where the less people have to eat, the more they have to swallow.