Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.
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.
Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.
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.
Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.
The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille.
I am not a Marxist.
Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.
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.
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the thing, however, is to change it.
Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
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 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.
Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.
Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.
Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.
The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.
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.
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.
History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.
Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
Religion is the opium of the masses.
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.
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.
Democracy is the road to socialism.
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.
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.
In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.
Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.
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.
Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.
The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.
Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.
Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.
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.
From each according to his ability to each according to his need.
The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
Money is the alienated essence of man's work and existence; this essence dominates him and he worships it.
