Quotes About Philosophy

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

The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world.

Money is the alienated essence of man's labor and life; and this alien essence dominates him as he worships it.

Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world... of its proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man's labour and life, and this alien essence dominates him as he worships it.

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

To be radical is to go to the root of the matter. For man, however, the root is man himself.

Just as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand.

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.

All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

Hitherto men have always formed wrong ideas about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relations according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. The products of their brains have got out of their hands. They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations.

to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner...

Philosophy and the study of the real world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love.

A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the value-forming substance, the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc.

Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed man's self-consciousness and self-awareness as long as he has not found his feet in the universe.

The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself.

Así corno en las religiones vemos al hombre esclavizado por las criaturas de su propio cerebro, en la producción capitalista le vemos esclavizado por los productos de su propio brazo.9

Nous ne nous présentons pas au monde en doctrinaires avec un nouveau principe en lui disant: voici la vérité, c'est ici qu'il faut tomber à genoux. Des principes du monde nous tirons pour le monde des principes nouveaux.

The formula itself expresses that the money is not spent here as money, but is only advanced, and is thus simply the money form of capital, money capital. It further expresses the fact that it is the exchange-value, not the use-value, that is the decisive inherent purpose of the movement.

El trabajo es por esencia la actividad carente de libertad, inhumana y asocial, cuya condición y cuyo resultado es la propiedad privada. La superación de la propiedad privada, por tanto, solo será realidad cuando se la conciba como superación del trabajo.

The charges against communism made from a religious, philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

An abundance of good friends does not lead to better philosophy .

The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value.4 But this usefulness does not dangle in mid-air. It is conditioned by the physical properties of the commodity, and has no existence apart from the latter. It is therefore the physical body of the commodity itself, for instance iron, corn, a diamond, which is the use-value or useful thing. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities.