Quotes from Karl Marx

Feuerbach consequently does not see that the 'religious sentiment' is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual that he analyses belongs in reality to a particular social form.

Nothing can emerge at the end of the process which did not appear as a presupposition and precondition at the beginning.

All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.

la même importance que la loi de la transformation de l'énergie pour les sciences naturelles, lui fournit ici également la clé pour la compréhension de l'histoire de la deuxième République française.

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

No eunuch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favor, than does the eunuch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbor.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

Its patriarchal society became one in which people were reduced to factors of production, with the whole system fueled by desire for export profits.

La historia de toda sociedad se resume en el desarrollo de los antagonismos de 1as clases, antagonismos que han revestido diversas formas en las distintas épocas. Pero cualquiera que haya sido la forma revestida por esos antagonismos, la explotación de una parte de la sociedad por la otra es un hecho común a todos los siglos anteriores.

That social revolution, it is true, was no novelty invented in 1848. Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citizens Barbés, Raspail and Blanqui. - Speech at anniversary of the People's Paper, April 1856

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer. In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him-and I didn't know how potent that part might be-that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Hegel is not to be blamed for depicting the nature of the modern state as it is, but rather for presenting what is as the essence of the state. The claim that the rational is actual is contradicted precisely by an irrational actuality, which everywhere is the contrary of what it asserts and asserts the contrary of what it is.

At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force. - Speech at anniversary of the People's Paper, April 1856

The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter in practice. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.

Nevertheless, for weal or for woe, there is no such thing extant as Anglo-Saxon—of all nations, said to be Anglo-Saxon, in the United States least. What we still have from England, much as appearances may seem to point the other way, is not of our bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes of the nature of importations. We are no more English on account of them than we are Chinese because we all drink tea.

Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself.

Maddi yaÅŸamdaki üretim biçimi, yaÅŸam?n toplumsal, siyasal ve düÅŸünsel sürecinin genel niteliÄŸine egemendir. Ä°nsanlar?n varl?klar?n? belirleyen ÅŸey, bilinçleri deÄŸildir; tam tersine, onlar?n bilinçlerini, toplumsal varl?klar? belirler.

The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws.

Ognuno secondo le sue capacità; a ognuno secondo i suoi bisogni!

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hos tility of one nation to another will come to an end

One basis for life and another basis for science is a priori a lie.

Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living