Quotes (1904)

Quotes from the December 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early issues of the Socialist Standard would be peppered with brief quotes which would serve as inspirational, informative and, most importantly, as space fillers. Here are the quotes from the December 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard:

Let no man fear the name of "Socialist." The movement of the working class for justice by any other name would be as terrible.  — Father William Barry.

The rich are always content with the lot of the poor.  — Wertheimer.

Call ye that a society, where there is no longer any social idea extant? not so much as the idea of a common house, but only of a common over-crowded lodging house, where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and cries "mine!" and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed.  — T. Carlyle. (Sarter Resartus.)

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who now, for the first time, becomes the real conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. . . . It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.—Frederick Engels.

Obstinacy of opinion and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so assured, resolute, disdainfu, contemplative, serious, and grave as an ass?  — Montaigne.

The really exhausting and really repulsive labours instead of being better paid they are almost invariably the worst paid of all . . . The more revolting the occupation the more certain it is to receive the minimum of remuneration.  — John S. Mill.

In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, forms the basis upon which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch. Consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes. The history of these class struggles form a series of evolution in in which, now-a-days, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class— the bourgeoisie—without at the same time, and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-distinctions and class-struggles.—Marx.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. —The Communist Manifesto. 

He that is down needs fear no fall.  — Pilgrim's Progress.

Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,

Than fee a doctor for a nauseous draught.

                                                             — Dryden. 

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,

Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

                                                             —  Dr. Johnson. 

"Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea;"

"Why as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones."

                                                             — Shakespeare.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it.  — Macklin.

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.  — Richard Rumbold, when on the Scaffold (1685).

The Co-operative movement has to some extent lost sight of the great aim which Robert Owen had in view, which was to raise the whole of the members of the community by reorganising the forces and circumstances which governed their lives.  — Co-operative Annual, 1902.