Karl Marx

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it

Everyone of our relationships with nature and man must be a definite expression of our real, individual life.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence Abolish all private property.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

To be radical is to grasp things by the root.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

Follow your own path no matter what people say.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

History repeats itself first as tragedy second as farce.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

The alienation of man thus appeared as the fundamental evil of capitalist society.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life time of the masses into labour time.

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state.

Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation.

Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

Work is external to the worker. . . . It is not part of his nature; consequently he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself. . . . The worker therefore feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless.

There comes a time in your life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus solely on the good. After all, life is too short to be anything but happy.

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

Hence money may be dirt although dirt is not money.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

I am not a Marxist.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

Junk food, empty calories and carbs are the big data of the masses.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

The way people get their living determines their social outlook.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.

The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

I am greatly pleased with the public, authentic isolation in which we two, you and I, now find ourselves. It is wholly in accord with our attitude and our principles.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Consumption is also immediately production just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.

Exchange value forms the substance of money and exchange value is wealth.

It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

Wages are determined by the bitter struggle between capitalist and worker.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

For capitalism war and peace are business and nothing but business.

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

Beauty is the main positive form of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, in which aesthetic ideal finds it direct expression.

Religion is the opiate of the people.

Communism is the riddle of history solved and it knows itself to be this solution.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

History does nothing it does not possess immense riches it does not fight battles. It is men real living who do all this.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.