“Clearly our first task is to use the material wealth of space to solve the urgent problems we now face on Earth: to bring the poverty-stricken segments of the world up to a decent living standard, without recourse to war or punitive action against those already in material comfort; to provide for a maturing civilization the basic energy vital to its survival.”

Preface to ' (1859).
Context: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. [Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewusstsein bestimmt. ] At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois modes of production as so many progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.

“The Road Away from Revolution”, Atlantic Monthly 132:146 (August 1923). Reprinted in PWW 68:395
1920s and later

Implementing the Land Reform (1958) (excerpts)

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 107-108

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. I (p. 6).

Source: Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology', 1995, p. 104; from original source: a quote by David Bourdon, in A Redefinition of Sculpture, in 'Carl Andre: Sculpture 1959–1977', New York 1978, pp.19

1990s
Source: Artforum International. Vol. 32 (1994), p. 38

Speech in Burma (July 1944) as quoted in The Great Speeches of Modern India (2011) https://books.google.com/books?id=z7dCH_IYbt8C&pg=PT137&lpg=PT137&dq=%22Gird+up+your+loins+for+the+task+that+now+lies+ahead.+I+had+asked+you+for+men,+money+and+materials%22&source=bl&ots=KiUxFbJQjT&sig=v7j_-1MYNUSCQFLxt8ElNpDicjc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tjIVVcyEFoLfoAS13oDQDA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22Gird%20up%20your%20loins%20for%20the%20task%20that%20now%20lies%20ahead.%20I%20had%20asked%20you%20for%20men%2C%20money%20and%20materials%22&f=false by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Source: Fight Club