267 quotes
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)
Beauty is the main positive form of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, in which aesthetic ideal finds it direct expression…
Grundrisse (1857)
It destroys the conditions for the existence of class antagonism, destroys classes in general, and thereby also its domination as a class.
The South has conquered nothing — but a graveyard.
Comments on the North American Events (1862)
The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
The unity is brought about by force.
Grundrisse (1857)
I who can have, through the power of money, everything for which the human heart longs, do I not possess all human abilities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their opposites?
Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)
Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place.
The German Ideology (1845)
Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
Nothing has changed in Russia's policy…. Her methods, her tactics, her maneuvers may change, but the pole star—world domination—is immutable.
Ramsgate is full of Jews and fleas.
Manufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the hoe market, by monopolies in the colonial market, and broad as much as possible by differential duties.
The German Ideology (1845)
In fact of course, this 'productive' worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn't give a damn for the junk.
Grundrisse (1857)
Thus heaven I’ve forfeited,
I know it full well.
My soul, once true to God,
Is chosen for hell.
The Pale Maiden (1837)
For the world to become philosophic amounts to philosophy's becoming world-order reality; and it means that philosophy, at the same time that it is realized, disappears.
The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (1841)
Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him.
We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
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.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
Though private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is rather its consequence, just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion.
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood.Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.