Best 450 quotes of Karl Marx on MyQuotes

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of the real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of the spiritless condition. It is the opium of the people.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

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.

Science and democracy are the right and left hands of what I'll refer to as the move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.

Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.

Since labour is motion, time is its natural measure.

Since only what is material is perceptible, knowable, nothing is known of the existence of God.

Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth,it buys as long as it has the means to buy.

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

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

Society is a sort of organism on the growth of which conscious efforts can exercise little effect.

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way.

So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange-value either in a pearl or a diamond.

So in Jewry we recognise a contemporary universal anti-social phenomenon, which has reached its present pitch through a process of, historical development in which the Jews have zealously co-operated. And this evil anti-social aspect of Jewry has grown to a stage at which: it must necessarily collapse.

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

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.

Surplus-value and the rate of surplus-value are... the invisible essence to be investigated, whereas the rate of profit and hence the form of surplus-value as profit are visible surface phenomena

Taxes are the source of life for the bureaucracy, the army and the court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.

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

The animal is one with its life activity. It does not distinguish the activity from itself. It is its activity. But man makes hislife activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has a conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely identified.

The better shaped his product, the more misshapen the worker.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.

The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.

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.

The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state

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

The capitalist cannot store labour-power in warehouses after he has bought it, as he may do with the raw material.

The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money.

The capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of self-earned private property: in other words, the expropriation of the labourer.

The circulation of capital realizes value , while living labour creates value .

The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.

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

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They open declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

...the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things... They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.

The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

The consciousness of the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

The criticism of Religion is the beginning of all criticism

The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity.

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 directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.

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

The English Established Church... will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income.

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

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