Rutger Bregman Quotes

It is precisely because neither individuals nor small groups can be fully self-sufficient that cooperation is necessary to human survival and flourishing.

The fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to none.

Twenty years ago, I wrote a book called 'It Takes a Village.' And a lot of people looked at the title and asked, 'What the heck do you mean by that?' This is what I mean. None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone.

Cooperation called fraternity in the classic French formula is as much a part of the democratic ideal as is personal initiative. That cultural conditions were allowed to develop (markedly so in the economic phase) which subordinated cooperativeness to liberty and equality serves to explain the decline in the two latter.

Anarchists are socialists because they want the improvement of society, and they are communists because they are convinced that such a transformation of society can only result from the establishment of a commonwealth of property.

In our family, my brothers and I shared toys. In other words, just because it was mine didn't mean my brothers and I didn't play with it.

Socialism appeals to me. It's like imposed Christianity. You've got to share.

If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation. And we're cooperating like never before.

Each individual member of a co-operative society works with that interest which is inseparable from the new position he enjoys. Each has an interest in the other.

The ethic of liberal individualism has so deeply permeated the psyches of blacks... of all classes that we have little support for a political ethic of communalism that promotes the sharing of resources.

Socialism is the ideal state, but it can never be achieved while man is so selfish.

You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.

One can't do anything alone in Haiti. Sharing and cooperation are so deeply woven into the culture that sometimes it's hard to have a separate thought.

Socialism is a scientific scheme of national organization, entirely wise, just, and practical. It is a kind of national cooperation. Its programme consists, essentially, of one demand, that the land, and all other instruments of production and exchange, shall be the common property of the nation, and shall be used and managed by the nation for the nation.

It is ... difficult to induce a number of free beings to co-operate for their mutual benefit.

Join cooperatively with one another, put aside self-interest, and take on service to the public …

I lose faith in any cooperative, commonwealth; cannot see how, after all, there will be incentives.

What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody.

Men will find that they can prepare with mutual aid far more easily what they need, and avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides, by united force.

There are neither mendicants no paupers as long as there are any rich people among them. Their kindness, humanity, and courtesy not only make them liberal with what they have, but cause them to possess hardly anything except in common. A whole village must be without corn before any individual can be obliged to endure privation

I have noticed that when chickens quit quarreling over their food they often find that there is enough for all of them. I wonder if it might not be the same with the human race

Support each other as is needed to achieve goals for the benefit of the people and the nation's security.

Let's help each other. New York, because New York is first. And then after New York, and after the curve breaks in New York, let's all rush to whoever's second. And then let's all rush to whoever's third. And let's learn from each other and help each other.

Our power creates collective production in the service of the people and the revolution, destroys exploiting production, transforms individualistic producers into producers integrated into the collectivity.