Inspirational Quotes

Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.

Karl Marx Quotes

CreativityExpressionHistoryInfluenceResponsibility The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
HarmonyIdeologyOppositionPeaceSocialism The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.
Greek CultureLiteratureNarrativePhilosophyTragedy Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.
ChangeHistoryPowerProgressTransformation Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
EconomicsKnowledgeLaborScienceValue 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.
GovernancePoliticsSocialism Democracy is the road to socialism.
FaithHuman MindKnowledgeReligionUnderstanding Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.
EconomicsImpactSocietyTechnologyWork The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
Human NatureIndividualityPoliticsSociety 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.
EqualityExistencePhilosophyTimeValue of Human Life 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.
Class StruggleConflictHistoryRevolutionSociety The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
HealingMental HealthPainResilienceSuffering The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
FeminismGender EqualityHuman RightsSocial ProgressSociety Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.
FeminismGender EqualityHistoryProgressSocial Change 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.
FunctionalityObjectivityPracticalityUtilityValue Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.
OpiumOppressionReligionSoulWorldly Conditions 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.
Conservation ChallengesEcologyEnvironmental ImpactIndustrializationSustainability 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.
CapitalismEconomicsGrowthInvestmentValue 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.
CapitalismEconomicsGreedHuman NatureRationality While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.
EconomySocietyTechnology Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
ChangeClass StruggleFreedomRevolutionUnity 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!
CapitalismEconomicsExploitationFinanceLabor Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
RevolutionRevolutionary ArdourSpirit of Generalization The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.
CompetitionEconomicsIndustrializationLabor MarketWages 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.
HistoryIdeologyPoliticsRevolution There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.
CommunityIndividualsInterrelationsRelationsSociety Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
Artistic PurposeCreativityEconomic RealityIntegrityMotivation 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.
Critical ThinkingPolitical IdeologySelf-IdentityUncertainty If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.
Class StructureEqualityIntellectPerceptionSociety 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.
CapitalismEconomicsLaborTechnologyWealth Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.