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It is in fact not the consciousness dominating life but the very life dominating consciousness.

— Karl Marx The German Ideology (1845)

Nicht das Bewußtsein bestimmt das Leben, sondern das Leben bestimmt das Bewußtsein.

Original text (German)

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Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human.

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

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History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.

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Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.

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

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Karl Marx (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.