A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.
By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.
Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.
Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're still-born.
I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.
I pass the test that says a man who isn't a socialist at 20 has no heart, and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.
If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.
It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism.
It wasn't idealism that made me, from the beginning, want a more secure and rational society. It was an intellectual judgment, to which I still hold. When I was young its name was socialism. We can be deflected by names. But the need was absolute, and is still absolute.
Lions, wolves, and vultures don't live together in herds, droves or flocks. Of all animals of prey, man is the only sociable one. Every one of us preys upon his neighbor, and yet we herd together.
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
One is a socialist because one used to be one, no longer going to demonstrations, attending meetings, sending in one's dues, in short, without paying.
People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology.
Rascals are always sociable — more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others company.
Real socialism is inside man. It wasn't born with Marx. It was in the communes of Italy in the Middle Ages. You can't say it is finished.
Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless.