“Something that is merely negative creates nothing.”

—  Karl Marx

(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 532.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Something that is merely negative creates nothing." by Karl Marx?
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx 290
German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and … 1818–1883

Related quotes

Ram Dass photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Thomas Fuller photo

“Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Of Fame.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“But God who creates out of nothing, who almightily takes from nothing and says, ‘Be’, lovingly adjoins, ‘Be something even in apposition to me.’”

Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, 1848 Lowrie 1940, 1961 p. 132
1840s, Christian Discourses (1848)
Context: A man who but rarely, and then only cursorily, concerns himself with his relationship to God, hardly thinks or dreams that he has so closely to do with God, or that God is so close to him, that there exists a reciprocal relationship between him and God, the stronger a man is, the weaker God is, the weaker a man is, the stronger God is in him. Every one who assumes that a God exists naturally thinks of Him as the strongest, as He eternally is, being the Almighty who creates out of nothing, and for whom all the creation is as nothing; but such a man hardly thinks of the possibility of a reciprocal relationship. And yet for God, the infinitely strongest, there is an obstacle; He has posited it Himself, yea, He has lovingly, with incomprehensible love posited it Himself; for He posited it and posits it every time a man comes into existence, when He in His love makes to be something directly in apposition https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apposite to Himself. Oh, marvelous omnipotence of love! A man cannot bear that his ‘creations’ should be directly in apposition to Himself, and so he speaks of them in a tone of disparagement as his ‘creations’. But God who creates out of nothing, who almightily takes from nothing and says, ‘Be’, lovingly adjoins, ‘Be something even in apposition to me.’ Marvellous love, even His omnipotence is under the sway of love!

“Nothing ought to be said or done which could create the impression that unbiased reconsideration of the most elementary premises of philosophy is a merely academic or historical affair.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 31

Gordon B. Hinckley photo

“There is nothing that dulls a personality so much as a negative outlook.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Whosoever Will Save His Life, Tambuli, Feb 1983, 1.

Lydia Canaan photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Mo Yan photo

Related topics