Karl Marx Quotes

“...the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”

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

“There is only one effective antidote for mental suffering and that is physical pain.”

“I do not like money, money is the reason we fight.”

“The entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labor.”

“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.”

“All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy”

“Last words are for those fools who believe they have not yet said enough.”

“Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange, because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.”

“If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.”

“Since labour is motion, time is its natural measure.”

“The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws.”

“Those dogs of democrats and liberal riff-raff will see that we're the only chaps who haven't been stultified by the ghastly period of peace.”

“A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.”

“So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.”

“As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.”

“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.”

“All I know is that I am not a Marxist.”

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”

“In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.”

“Money is the alienated essence of man's work and existence; this essence dominates him and he worships it.”

“The full man does not understand the wants of the hungry”

“Capital brings forth living offspring, or at the least, lays the golden eggs.”

“Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor.”

“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.”