Quotes from Karl Marx

Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].

As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the products of his own hand.10

From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life.

Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice -- Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (July 11, 1868)

Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible.

The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production.

Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome.

Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man's work and man's existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is forthwith punished as an assault upon society, and is branded as Socialism

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

atheism" ... reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man. Marx, Letter to 30 November 1842

Ignorance never yet helped anybody.

The tradition of past generations weighs like the Alps on the brains of the living.

Machinery which is not used is not capital.

Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity

The weapon of criticism obviously cannot replace the criticism of weapons. Material force must be overthrown by material force. But theory also becomes a material force once it has gripped the masses.

In fact, the proposition that man's species nature is estranged from him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of them is from man's essential nature.

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

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. 

Pengabstrakan kerja dalam bentuk uang mengandaikan dialektika di antara perkerjaan/kerja yang secara sosial dibutuhkan untuk membuat barang dagangan/komoditi/jasa, dengan proses produksi kapitalisme yang justru meniadakan kerja manusia itu sendiri. Sehingga proses produksi kapitalisme dalam kelanjutannya hanya menempatkan manusia sebagai bagian dari proses akumulasi modal.