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.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

I’m not gonna be bad at anything, and I want to actually be the best at anything I’m doing. So if I’m playing basketball, if I’m taking the SATs, like, there’s a competitive spirit behind it. With production, it’s the same thing.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

From 1945 to 1974, the Western world – including America – was more socialistic than capitalistic, more pro-labor than pro-business.

Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

Anti-Americanism is a pure totalitarian concept. The very notion is idiotic.

The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand-or say they don’t-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.

High-quality early-childhood programs and health coverage have expanded, and the number of mentoring relationships for at-risk youth has risen dramatically. That progress is encouraging, but it’s not evenly distributed.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

I’m opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

I’m conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs.

I’m not a conservative of any kind.

The Islamists will try to spoil everything for everyone.

The factory is the machine that builds the machine.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

The rise in the price of gold is a sign that capitalism has stumbled.

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Obviously, I’m no fan of the radical left.

I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it’s a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you’re an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you’re religious, there’s a mystery left there.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Communism has decided against God, against Christ, against the Bible, and against all religion.

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me.

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

We know what works. Freedom Works. We know what’s right. Freedom is right.

In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don’t have that in the rocket business. There’s no Foxconn in the rocket business.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.