The quotations of

Karl Marx

German-born philosopher

1818–1883

26 quotes, most often on Economics, Politics and Work.

Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.
- Philosophy
Every act and event is the inevitable result of prior acts and events and is independent of human will.
The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him, but to the object.
- Anti-God
- Work
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
“Theses on Feuerbach” (1845), Thesis 11, Marx Engels Selected Works,(MESW), Volume I, p. 15
- Change
- Philosophy
Capital is dead labor, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867), Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 1, p. 257.
- Economics
- Work
The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867), Vol. I, Ch. 13, pg. 363.
- Economics
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.
Addenda, “Relative and Absolute Surplus Value” in Economic Manuscripts (1861-63)
- Economics
- Science
Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867), Vol. I, Ch. 3a
- Money
The knell of capitalist private property sounds.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867), Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
- Economics
Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities.
On the Jewish Question (1843)
- Money
The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general.
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859).
- Economics
- Philosophy
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.
A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Introduction (1844)
- Anti-Religion
- Religion
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
- History
When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.
Remarks against personality cults from a letter to W. Blos (10 November 1877).
- Power
A spectre is haunting Europe⁠—the spectre of Communism.
The Communist Manifesto (1848)In context
- Politics

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