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Karl Marx: 580 quotes304 likes

“When we have weighed everything, and when our relations in life permit us to choose any given position, we may take that one which guarantees us the greatest dignity, which is based on ideas of whose truth we are completely convinced, which offers the largest field to work for mankind and approach the universal goal for which every position is only a means: perfection.”

Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 38
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

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

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. III, 30.

“The object before us, to begin with, material production.”

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 3, first text page, first line.

“England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.”

" The British Rule in India http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm," New York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1853.

“In England women are still occasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation.”

Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 2, pg. 430.
(Buch I) (1867)

“Classical political economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however, consciously formulating it. This it cannot so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. I, Ch. 19, pg. 594.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

“Hegel once observed that comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning. Although Lincoln does not possess the grandiloquence of historical action, as an average man of the people he has its humour.”

Comments on the North American Events (1862)

“But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets?”

Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 6, pg. 479.
(Buch I) (1867)

“But every class struggle is a political struggle.”

Section 1, paragraph 39, lines 8-9.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“Titles of property, for instance railway shares, may change hands every day, and their owner may make a profit by their sale even in foreign countries, so that titles to property are exportable, although the railway itself is not.”

Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 215.
(Buch II) (1893)

“Luxury is the opposite of the naturally necessary.”

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 448.

“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."”

Die Bourgeoisie, wo sie zur Herrschaft gekommen, hat alle feudalen, patriarchalischen, idyllischen Verhältnisse zerstört. Sie hat die buntscheckigen Feudalbande, die den Menschen an seinen natürlichen Vorgesetzten knüpften, unbarmherzig zerrissen und kein anderes Band zwischen Mensch und Mensch übriggelassen als das nackte Interesse, als die gefühllose "bare Zahlung".
Section 1, paragraph 14, lines 1-5.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity.”

(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, p. 696.

“What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.”

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 37.

“The tool, as we have seen, is not exterminated by the machine.”

Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 2, pg. 422.
(Buch I) (1867)

“Beauty is the main positive form of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, in which aesthetic ideal finds it direct expression…”

About Beauty
(1857/58)

“No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.”

Section 1, paragraph 34.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“Money is itself a product of circulation.”

(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 579.

“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.”

Karl Marx book The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature

The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (1841)

“If I negate powdered wigs, I am still left with unpowdered wigs.”

Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1844).