On socialism:
The socialists want to regenerate humans, to liberate them. They conclude that having forcibly changed the economic way humans live they will achieve their goals. But humans are transformed not from external reasons but only from moral changes…. Lacking any spiritual basis for human brotherhood, the socialists must resort to compulsion to establish it. The comicality, the weakness, the nonsense, the disagreement, the self-contradictions-you can’t imagine it! And that’s the trash that’s stirring up the unfortunate working people! It’s sad.
They began by saying that in order to achieve peace on earth the Christian faith had to be exterminated. Large states had to be destroyed…all capital be done away with, so that everything be in common, by order, and so on. All this without the slightest proof, all this was learned by heart 20 years ago…And most importantly fire and sword and after everything had been annihilated, then, in their opinion, there will be peace.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
(H/T: via Betsy’s Page)
