They who have been reading the capitalist newspapers realize what a capacity they have for lying. We have been reading them lately. They know all about the Socialist Party—the Socialist movement, except what is true. Only the other day they took an article that I had written—and most of you have read it—most of you members of the party, at least—and they made it appear that I had undergone a marvelous transformation. I had suddenly become changed—had in fact come to my senses; I had ceased to be a wicked Socialist, and had become a respectable Socialist, a patriotic Socialist—as if I had ever been anything else. What was the purpose of this deliberate misrepresentation? It is so self-evident that it suggests itself. The purpose was to sow the seeds of dissension in our ranks; to have it appear that we were divided among ourselves; that we were pitted against each other, to our mutual undoing. But Socialists were not born yesterday. They know how to read capitalist newspapers; and to believe exactly the opposite of what they read. Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all — testing days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of all the world; a time in which the weak and cowardly will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test; they fall away; they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand, they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them, if need be — they are writing their names, in this crucial hour — they are writing their names in faceless letters in the history of mankind.

The follies of Socialism are inexhaustible... Even among themselves they have twenty discordant factions who hate one another even more than they hate you and me. Their insincerity! Can you not feel a sense of disgust at the arrogant presumption of superiority of these people?.... Then when it comes to practice, down they fall with a wallop not only to the level of ordinary human beings but to a level which is even far below the average.

I cannot repress my indignation at the use of those foolish obsolete, odious, words Whig and Tory.

Taft explained that the great issue in this campaign is "creeping socialism." Now that is the patented trademark of the special interest lobbies. Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.
Socialism is what they called public power.
Socialism is what they called social security.
Socialism is what they called farm price supports.
Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.
Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.
Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.
When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan "Down With Socialism" on the banner of his "great crusade," that is really not what he means at all.
What he really means is, "Down with Progress — down with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal," and "down with Harry Truman's ." That is what he means.

Twitter is a handy and constant reminder that socialists are disgusting people.

Albert Burleson, had already declared war on the Socialist Party by yanking second-class postal rates for a series of socialist-minded periodicals, including The Masses, the Milwaukee Leader, the New York Call, and the paper Trotsky had written for, the Forward.19

[Callaghan] said the most hateful slogan that he had heard recently, made at a protest march, was "What do we want? Everything! When do we want it? Now!" That was not socialism but fascism. There are too many of these people who have infiltrated this party already. Get them out!

Critics! Appalled I ventured on the name.
Those cutthroat bandits in the paths of fame.

And I was angry because the media took racism seriously - or pretended to - but with sexism, they rarely bothered even to pretend.

I quit reading what the papers said about me because either they portrayed me as more self-sacrificing than I was, or they didn't like me and said, in a variety of ways, that I was a fake.

He detested titles. This, no doubt, is why he distributed them so lavishly.

It is far more likely that by the time nationalization has become the rule, and private enterprise the exception, Socialism (which is really rather a bad name for the business) will be spoken of, if at all, as a crazy religion held by a fanatical sect in that darkest of dark ages, the nineteenth century. Already, indeed, I am told that Socialism has had its day, and that the sooner we stop talking nonsense about it and set to work, like the practical people we are, to nationalize the coal mines and complete a national electrification scheme, the better. And I, who said forty years ago that we should have had Socialism already but for the Socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing. What I meant by my jibe at the Socialists of the eighteen-eighties was that nothing is ever done, and much is prevented, by people who do not realize that they cannot do everything at once.

I don't like my name appearing on the papal candidate lists.

Idealists can be quite a problem when they get disgusted with themselves.