Karl Marx's Quotes

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

Being serious just makes me a little bit embarrassed.

Everyone thinks that 'Chinatown' is the best screenplay. I'm not sure it is.

For somebody who is a journalist, I can be awfully unobservant sometimes.

I do not find the concept of consorting with unknown persons appealing.

I write the shopping column. I think I've proven my superficiality.

I'm a goody-goody. I'm the person who sits in the back row, makes fun of the teacher, and secretly does the extra-credit work.

Men still wear cologne, but I wish they wouldn't. No matter what you may believe, all men's fragrances smell like the air freshener in a taxi.

New York is rich in culture, cuisine, and commerce.

New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Shanghai doesn't even sit down, and not just because there is no room.

Perhaps the most mysterious of all mammals is the male Homo sapiens. Indeed, many anthropologists classify the group as a subspecies.

The Chinese are no slouches when it comes to capitalism.

Unless you're a salesman, or a bad guest on a talk show, you don't call someone by his name that often.

'Couch surfing' refers to the practice of temporarily lodging with a stranger - free of charge, unless you count being incessantly sociable as payment.

High heels weren't always a girl thing. In the fifteen-hundreds, the riding shoes of French noblemen were fitted with raised heels so that their feet stayed put in the stirrups. Over the next few decades, heels inched higher on dress shoes, particularly among men of privilege.

I don't really care that much about eating. But I like impressing people with how good a cook I am. So I will cook. I'm an excellent cook. Not many people know that about me.

I think I began to like writing a lot more, and to be a better writer, when I did it for a while alone. It made me a little more confident about my style.

It's better to spend a lot on a getup you love than a fraction of that on something, or even five of those somethings, that you'll never bother to take out of the shopping bag. By the way, this advice also applies to discount love interests. And half-price sushi.

Males have probably always enjoyed watching the defeat of other males, but without the invention of numerals and the subsequent invention of the concept of keeping score, we could never have had a million sports channels.

One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you're going to be longwinded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.

Part of my writing style can be attributed to my mother's impatience with comedy, because whenever I told her a story she would say, 'Yeah, yeah, just tell me: is it good for you or bad for you?' Consequently, I think, I was always afraid to indulge in the time that you need to tell a joke, very nervous about anything that constituted an Act II.

Though the male can be noble in reason and infinite in faculties, he is also easily amused by shiny toys, especially ones that do dumb things on his desk.

You don't have to spend much time in Shanghai before you start to get all existential about the meaning of authenticity. Did you know that Shanghai is building nine satellite towns, each designed to mimic the architecture and culture of a different country?