Karl Marx Quotations

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

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!

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

The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

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.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

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

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

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

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

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.

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.

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

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

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.

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

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

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.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

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.

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.

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.

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.

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

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.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

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

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

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

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

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.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

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

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

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

Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs

History always repeats itself twice: first time as tragedy, second time as farce.

Religion is the sign of the oppressed... It is the opium of the people.

It is not ""history"" which uses men as a means of achieving -- as if it were an individual person -- its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

It is not "history" which uses men as a means of achieving -- as if it were an individual person -- its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

Fascism in power is the open, terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of finance capitalism.

When we bought this house, we designated this room the library,

Constant revolutionizing of production distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to gain. Workers of the world, unite.

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

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade

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.

Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.

Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.

There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery

My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.

Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.

Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.

If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

There comes a time in your life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus solely on the good. After all, life is too short to be anything but happy.

The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille

The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.

Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into commodities.

The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.

When the sufferers learn to think, then the thinkers will learn to suffer.

The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions.

The unity of the bourgeoisie can be shaken only by the unity of the proletariat.

There is only one way to kill capitalism - by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.

Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.

Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.

The alienation of man thus appeared as the fundamental evil of capitalist society.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point, however, is to change it.

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it

Capitalist agricultural production prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge.

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

The class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history

The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.

Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

Russia is a name usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs; they do not belong to the Indo-Germanic race at all, they are des intrus [intruders], who must be chased back across the Dnieper, etc.

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew -- not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. ... What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.. 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. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.