Quotes By Karl Marx

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

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.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

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.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

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

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

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.

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.

Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.

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!

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

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.

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.

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

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.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

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.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

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