Social Democracy Quotes

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  We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Wisdom, Country, Power

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• They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Happiness, Peace

  Benjamin Franklin, William-Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818”, p.270

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• The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Democracies Have, Australia Day

  Noam Chomsky (1997). “World Orders, Old and New”, p.89, Pluto Press

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• A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

  A. Philip Randolph

  Powerful, Struggle, Rights In America

  "Voter Suppression Is Treasonous" by Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 22, 2012.

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• Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Country, Children

  Thomas F. Jackson, Martin Luther King (Jr.) (2007). “From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice”, p.230, University of Pennsylvania Press

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  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

  Margaret Mead

  Inspirational, Life, Friendship

  Margaret Mead, Robert B. Textor (2005). “The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future”, p.12, Berghahn Books

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• The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.

  John Dewey

  Change, Education, Mean

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.96, Courier Corporation

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• Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Democracies Have, Lust, Democracy

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool Memories”, p.14, Verso

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• The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles...Social democracy...is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh. Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Country, Struggle, Fighting

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• The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Leadership, Determination, Destiny

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• The self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the Social Democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Self, Class, Roots

  "Revolutionary Socialist Organization". Book by Rosa Luxemburg, www.marxists.org. 1934.

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• In America I think we need to move towards a social democracy, European-style basically, and I think that in Britain we do as well.

  Irvine Welsh

  Moving, Thinking, America

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Contemporary social democracy is what I believe is the right concept.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Believe, Democracy, Social

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

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• People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.

  L. Neil Smith

  Men, Animal, Gun

  L. Neil Smith (2001). “The Probability Broach”, p.121, Macmillan

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• Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party, like the Social Democracy.

  Karl Liebknecht

  Party, Democracy, Roles

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• I do not think you can push public expenditure significantly above 60 per cent and maintain the values of a plural society with adequate freedom of choice. We are here close to one of the frontiers of social democracy.

  Roy Jenkins

  Thinking, Choices, Democracy

  "Inflation fight goes on, Mr Jenkins tells left". The Times, January 24, 1976.

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• Social democracy.. is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Blood, Democracy, Pieces

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• Social Democracy preached against capitalism for half a century. After the November revolution the Reds had the opportunity to direct capitalism into the proper paths: but nothing happened!

  Julius Streicher

  Opportunity, Democracy, Half

  "Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938.

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• ... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the New World Order and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.

  H. G. Wells

  Money, Disappointment, Hate

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• For German Social Democracy, Europe is vital to the national interest.

  Martin Schulz

  Europe, Democracy, Social

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I can't agree that what we're seeing is a matter of the American bourgeoisie confronting workers everywhere. It's more like the international plutocracy eliminating the American middle class while inadvertently creating a bourgeoisie in India, China, etc. I do agree that Soros's role is paradoxical, but if all billionaires (or even a few more) were like Soros, the dialectic would give us global social democracy PDQ.

  Hendrik Hertzberg

  Creating, Class, Giving

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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• Even under the most perfect Social Democracy we should, without Communism, still be living like hogs, except that each hog would get his fair share of grub.... Whilst we are hogs, let us at least be well-fed, healthy, reciprocally useful hogs, instead of--well, instead of the sort we are at present.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Perfect, Healthy, Democracy

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• Socialisms not a word that I use. I say social democracy because I dont think the government needs to own all the means of production.

  David Cunliffe

  Mean, Thinking, Government

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• Scholars have been arguing for a long time whether the Soviet Union could have been turned into some kind of social democracy. I doubt it myself. I think what Gorbachev didn't quite understand, until it was too late, is that his efforts at change unleashed new, certrifical forces he hadn't counted on. He opened the door a crack and a huge wind blew it open.

  David Hoffman

  Thinking, Doors, Wind

  "David Hoffman on 'The Dead Hand' and End of the Cold War". Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. September 21, 2009.

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• We have to accept that capitalism is coming to an end. We can't provide paid employment for people, all the industries with technology are counter-intuitive to profit, and we have to have a transition to the conceptualist society. The only way to do it fairly is as a social democracy, a radical social democracy, which isn't compromised by neo-liberalism and isn't compromised by the rich, and isn't compromised by hegemonic, authoritarian interests: to have that balance between the government, the private sector, and then the individual citizens again.

  Irvine Welsh

  Technology, Government, People

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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