xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“I know myself, and I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do anything which I would not do before the whole world; but I am alarmed at the very thoughts of being in the society of people, during my journey, whose mode of thinking is so entirely different from mine (and from that of all good people). But of course they must do as they please. I have no heart to travel with them, nor could I enjoy one pleasant hour, nor know what to talk about; for, in short, I have no great confidence in them. Friends who have no religion cannot be long our friends.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (Mannheim, 2 February 1778), from The letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1769-1791, translated, from the collection of Ludwig Nohl, by Lady [Grace] Wallace (Oxford University Press, 1865, digitized 2006) vol. I, # 91 (p. 164) http://books.google.com/books?vid=0SGwLiCNxu7qZ5ch&id=KEgBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=%22The+letters+of+Wolfgang+Amadeus+Mozart,+1769-1791%22&hl=en#PRA1-PA164,M1

“Forgive me, Majesty. I am a vulgar man! But I assure you, my music is not.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Source: movie Amadeus (1984)

“All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter as published in The Letters of Mozart & His Family (1938) translated and edited by Emily Anderson, p. 1114.

“Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Source: Karl Marx. The German Ideology. 1845

“The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto (1848), Section 2 paragraph 7.

“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.

“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. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: "Forced Emigration," New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853.

“What do you think of the aspect of the money market? … This time, by the by, the thing has assumed European dimensions such as have never been seen before, and I don't suppose we'll be able to spend much longer here merely as spectators. The very fact that I've at last got round to setting up house again and sending for my books seems to me to prove that the 'mobilisation' of our persons is AT HAND.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Letter to Friedrich Engels (26 September 1856), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856–59 (2010), pp. 71–72

“Considering the optimistic turn taken by world trade AT THIS MOMENT…it is some consolation at least that the revolution has begun in Russia, for I regard the convocation of 'notables' to Petersburg as such a beginning. … [O]n the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Letter to Friedrich Engels (8 October 1858), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856–59 (2010), pp. 346–347

“Capital is money: Capital is commodities. […] For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Source: Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867), Vol. I, Ch. 2, pg. 171.

“It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto (1848), Preamble, paragraph 3.

“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.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto (1848) Section 1, Paragraph 30

“Revolutions are the locomotives of history.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Chapter 3, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch03.htm (1850)

“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)

“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for hell.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

“The Pale Maiden” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/verse/verse24.htm (1837) ballad

“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Section 1, paragraph 14.
The Communist Manifesto (1848)

“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto (1848), Section 1, paragraph 19

“Ramsgate is full of Jews and fleas.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

MEKOR IV, 490 https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/marx.and.antisemitism.1960.v27n214.htm, 25 August 1879

“The weapon of criticism obviously cannot replace the criticism of weapons. Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem, when it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root, but for man the root is man himself. The clear proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its political energy, is that it proceeds from the decisive positive abolition of religion.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)