Quotes from Karl Marx

It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.

History is thorough, and passes through many phases when it bears an old figure to the grave. The last phase of a world historical figure is its comedy.

One must force the frozen circumstances to dance, by singing to them their own melody.

Truth is general, it does not belong to me alone, it belongs to all, it owns me, I do not own it. My property is the form, which is my spiritual individuality.

Abolid la explotación del hombre por el hombre y habréis abolido la explotación de una nación por otra.

Nicht das Bewußtsein bestimmt das Leben, sondern das Leben bestimmt das Bewußtsein.

In a future society, in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which there will no longer be any classes, use will no longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of social production devoted to different articles will be determined by the degree of their social utility.

Theory becomes realized among a people only in so far as it represents the realization of that people's needs.

Man makes religion, religion does not make Man

El ejército cuyas tropas se pegan menos entre sí es el que triunfa sobre el otro.

Legislation, whether political or civil, never does more than proclaim, express in words, the will of economic relations.

Hay necesidad de una gran perspicacia para comprender que los conocimientos, las nociones y las concepciones, en una palabra, la conciencia del hombre, cambia con toda modificación sobrevenida en las relaciones sociales, en la existencia colectiva? ¿Qué demuestra la historia del pensamiento sino que la producción intelectual se transforma con la producción material?

they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society.

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

Ist die Konstruktion der Zukunft und das Fertigwerden für alle Zeiten nicht unsere Sache, so ist desto gewisser, was wir gegenwärtig zu vollbringen haben, ich meine die rücksichtslose Kritik alles Bestehenden, rücksichtslos sowohl in dem Sinne, daß die Kritik sich nicht vor ihren Resultaten fürchtet und ebensowenig vor dem Konflikte mit den vorhandenen Mächten.

Thus, when the universal sun has set, does the moth seek the lamp-light of privacy.

But on analysis of this concept it becomes clear that though private property appears to be the source, the cause of alienated labour, it is really the consequence, just as the gods in the beginning are not the cause but the effect of man's intellectual confusion. Later this relationship becomes reciprocal.

They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.

The history of all hitherto existing society1 is the history of class struggles.

If the State is to have reality as the ethical, self-conscious realization of spirit, it must be distinguished from the form of authority and faith. But this distinction arises only in so far as the ecclesiastical side is in itself divided into several churches. Then only is the State seen to be superior to them, and wins and brings into existence the universality of thought as the principle of its form.

Defining by a general law the expenditures on the...school....is a very different thing from appointing the state as educator of the people. Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school.

I can see you smile and say: what good will that do? Revolutions are not made by shame. And my answer is that shame is a revolution in itself; it really is the victory of the French Revolution over that German patriotism which defeated it in 1813. Shame is a kind of anger turned in on itself. And if a whole nation were to feel ashamed it would be like a lion recoiling in order to spring.

Man is the highest essence of man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence.

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society.