Karl Marx Quotes (97 Quotes)


    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.

    Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

    Democracy is the road to socialism.

    The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

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


    The burgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations into civilization.

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

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

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

    The bureaucracy is a circle from which one cannot escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are mutually deceived.

    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.

    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.

    Go on, get out last words are for fools who haven't said enough. To his housekeeper, who urged him to tell her his last words so she could write them down for posterity.

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

    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.

    In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

    The point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it.

    The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

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

    The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

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

    The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence Abolition of private property.

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

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

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

    All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy, avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth.

    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.

    From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is therefore the practical Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again.

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

    The policy of Russia is changeless... Its methods, its tactics, its maneuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy - world domination - is a fixed star.

    All I know is I'm not a Marxist.

    Workers of all lands unite. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways the point is to change 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.

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

    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.

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

    Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

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


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

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

    In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition others mere brawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water They are an unavoidable evil with time they are shaken off.

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

    Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.

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

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

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

    Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, etc., these offshoots of the period of manufacture swell to gigantic proportions during the period of infancy of large-scale industry. The birth of the latter is celebrated by a vast, Hero-like slaughter of the innocents.

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


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