Quotes about Communist System

Vladimir Lenin

Take immediate and decisive steps to better the condition of the peasant. Abandon the system of war-time Communism by which we practically took from the peasant all his surplus, and sometimes what was not his surplus but part of his necessary subsistence.

Vladimir Lenin. The “war-time” referred to the Civil War in Russia which broke out after the 1917 Revolution where the Whites and the Reds fought for control of Russia.

Palmiro Togliatti

It is not right to speak of the Socialist countries (and even the Soviet Union) as if everything always went well in them … In actual fact, in all the Socialist countries, difficulties, contradictions and new problems, which must be presented to their effective reality, are arising all the time.

This memo was written a few days before his death and it was the last document he wrote. The communists tended to use the word “socialist” so they could make it seem that the Soviet Bloc was allied or part of the same grouping as the Scandinavian countries, India and other countries that were neither ideological communists nor controlled by the Russian or any other Communist Party. Those nations, in contrast tended to use the word, “socialist” to distinguish themselves from the Communist countries. This mostly confused many Americans. Some conflated the socialist countries and the communist countries making no distinctions. Others, like most European politicians kept the distinction in mind. Most Americans were confused as the Red Scare perpetrators tended to conflate, and the liberals tended to distinguish.

Albert Einstein

One strength of the Communist system ... is that it has some of the characteristics of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

Moon Jae-in

I myself hate the communist North Korean system. That doesn't mean I should let the people in the North suffer under an oppressive regime.

Joe Lhota

I still am a virulent anti-communist. It is a bad system, an immoral system, and one that takes away the rights of people and the rights of individuals. And everywhere it's gone, it's failed.

Henry A. Kissinger

I was always convinced that decent people in the case of Vietnam, highly intelligent, decent people, got us involved because they had made, in part, a misjudgment about the nature of the communist system and the unity of the communist world and the degree to which the experience of Europe could be repeated in Vietnam.

Fidel Castro

The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore.

Graham Greene

If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.

E. P. Thompson

The readings of Soviet society are as many as the experts you speak to. In my view, it's a society that is overdue for measures of democratization and organization.

Peter Dicken

It remains to be seen, for example whether China can continue to develop as a market economy while still retaining an authoritarian communist political system.

Gerard Depardieu

In Hollywood, you still have wonderful actors, but it's so hard to work there. To work becomes a Kafka nightmare - it's the last communist country!

Milovan Djilas

The Communist leaders handle national property as their own, but at the same time they waste it as if it were somebody else's. Such is the nature of ownership and government of the system.

Martina Navratilova

I am just sorry my own mother had to live under that regime for most of her life. I was lucky. I got out and, 14 years later, Czechoslovakia became a free country. So I feel anger, even fury, at this bloody system that ruined so many people's lives for no reason whatsoever.

William H. O'Connell

The child labor amendment would commit this country forever to the Communist system of the nationalization of her children ... It would certainly impose involuntary servitude.

The Supreme Court had ruled that the Constitution prohibited the Federal Government from regulating conditions of child labor. A Constitutional amendment was passed by Congress and submitted to the States for ratification. That amendment is still the legal basis for all the Federal involvement in child labor. However there were many opponents. The idea of telling an employer that he could not work an 8 year old child for 14 hours a day was actually considered Communistic by some right wing elements. This quotation is famous for two reasons: First, it illustrates the extreme view against any kind of regulation of business that a strong minority held at the time. Second, this was a statement by a Roman Catholic Cardinal. The Catholic has generally been one of the progressive forces for labor reform (with the exception of racial discrimination and slavery) in the United States. Most modern Catholics are very surprised that a Cardinal actually issued such a Pastoral Letter—especially since he had been progressive on other issues {627510}.

Henry A. Kissinger

I do not know what will happen in China politically. I do know that it is impossible to maintain the communist system or probably even a strict one-party system when the economy becomes so pluralistic. Now, what form that takes and what institutions will evolve, I do not have a clear view about. I do not think the United States, as a general principle, ought to intervene in this.

Pius XI

For them (the peoples of the Soviet Union) We cherish the warmest paternal affection. We are well aware that not a few of them groan beneath the yoke imposed on them by men who in very large part are strangers to the real interests of the country. We recognize that many others were deceived by fallacious hopes. We blame only the system with its authors and abettors who considered Russia the best field for experimenting with a plan elaborated years ago, and who from there continue to spread it from one of the world to the other.

Sigmund Freud

I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.

Frank Zappa

Mr. Gorbachev has apparently stumbled onto one of the best-kept secrets in recent Soviet history: Communism doesn't work.

Communist System Quotes