Karl Marx Quotes

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.

A specter is 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am not a Marxist.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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.