“A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.”

— Karl Marx

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 31.

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 "A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish." by Karl Marx?

Karl Marx 290

German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and … 1818–1883

Related quotes

“It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.”

Isaac Asimov book Foundation

Source: Foundation

“One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

22 October 1846
Correspondence, Letters to Madame Louise Colet

“We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must — he cannot help himself — become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Context: If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.
The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must — he cannot help himself — become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.
If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.