September 5 2022

70 Karl Marx Quotes to Form Conscience on Social Issues

Ioanna Zafeiriou Quotes democracy and civil rights, quotes by a single personality

Class struggle, class consciousness, alienation, communism – and the face of Karl Marx in numerous posters in teenagers’ and students’ rooms to stand for revolutionary youth power. The radical thoughts of the 19^th century changed the history of the 20^th century. However, these are concepts and values that always need to be reviewed under a modern perspective, as these Karl Marx quotes may prove.

Karl Marx is one of the most influential figures in human history, famous for his theories about capitalism and communism collectively understood as Marxism. The German philosopher and political economist argued that society is composed of two main classes, capitalists and laborers. To put it briefly, capitalists are a social elite organizing the process of production, owning the means of it (factories, tools, and resources) and gaining all the profits. The laborers on the other side are the mass working only in return for a money wage. Through this relationship capitalists exploit workers.

The world has faced the collapse of the actually existing socialism for some time now and for many the really existing capitalism is falling on hard times. Industrialization has exploited earth’s resources and people all over the globe are now exploited as metadata by the internet. Hence, the notion of profit, having a broad spectrum of interpretations, from day to day making ends meet for the masses to wealth and power accumulation by the elite, has to be redefined.

If you’ve managed to come so far reading these lines, you might share my personal feeling: we need to take a step back, reread the great minds of the past, rethink and reevaluate our current situation in order to realize where we’re heading to. A new narrative, a new interpretation of the world is crucial to navigate ourselves with vision and optimism towards the future. In the following quotes you’ll read some of the most famous Marx’s thoughts that in many cases you’ll find prophetic, while in any case you’ll find inspirational!

Intriguing Karl Marx Quotes to Motivate your Intellect
Provoking Karl Marx Quotes on Religion

Insightful and Controversial Karl Marx Quotes on Capitalism
Famous Quotes about Power, Money and Values by Karl Marx

Intriguing Karl Marx Quotes to Motivate your Intellect

Through his theory Marx has given his own perspective on every aspect of life; read these quotes, find one that resonates with you and save it on your phone or write it down to your notebook!

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Karl Marx

As individuals express their life, so they are. Karl Marx
Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. Karl Marx
Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. Karl Marx

I am nothing but I must be everything. Karl Marx
Machinery which is not used is not capital. Karl Marx
Moments are the elements of profit. Karl Marx
Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough! Karl Marx

Ignorance never yet helped anybody. Karl Marx
The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. Karl Marx
In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life. Karl Marx
Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed. Karl Marx

Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. Karl Marx
The tradition of past generations weighs like the Alps on the brains of the living. Karl Marx
Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy. Karl Marx
I am a machine condemned to devour books. Karl Marx

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex. Karl Marx
The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. Karl Marx
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Karl Marx
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism. Karl Marx

karl-marx-quotes-1 | happy.better.wiser. — Ignorance never yet helped anybody Karl Marx

Provoking Karl Marx Quotes on Religion

Since the dawn of history, humanity acknowledges the sacred moment and the mystical experience; yet it has long been controlled by various religious systems at odds with freedom – and this is where Marx’s argument starts. As he unequivocally wrote, “Man makes religion, religion does not make man…”

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion. Karl Marx
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. Karl Marx
Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand. Karl Marx
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. Karl Marx

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. Karl Marx
Christian socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat. Karl Marx
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. Karl Marx
The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille. Karl Marx
The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity. Karl Marx

Man makes religion, religion does not make man… Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. Karl Marx

Insightful and Controversial Karl Marx Quotes on Capitalism

The following quotes will give you a taste of Marx’s ideas on capitalism and its effects. The words remain the same as more than a century ago, but mew meanings can be derived today.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people. Karl Marx
The alienation of man thus appeared as the fundamental evil of capitalist society. Karl Marx
Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. Karl Marx

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. Karl Marx
The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist. Karl Marx
As exchange-values, all commodities are merely definite quantities of congealed labour-time. Karl Marx
… it is impossible to carry on communist propaganda on a large scale and at the same time engage in huckstering and industry. Karl Marx
In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Karl Marx

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. Karl Marx
In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. Karl Marx
Just as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand. Karl Marx
The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits. Karl Marx
The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope. Karl Marx

Not only can we manage very well without the interference of the capitalist class in the great industries of the country, but that their interference is becoming more and more a nuisance. Karl Marx
Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world… of its proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man’s labour and life, and this alien essence dominates him as he worships it. Karl Marx
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 laborer. Karl Marx

Famous Quotes about Power, Money and Values by Karl Marx

Economy, politics and societal norms are proof of an organized society; but the abuse of their power converts safety in favour of the people to oppression against them.

The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world. Karl Marx

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity. Karl Marx
To be radical is to go to the root of the matter. For man, however, the root is man himself. Karl Marx
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite! Karl Marx
Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. Karl Marx
Merely quantitative differences, beyond a certain point, pass into qualitative changes. Karl Marx

Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded. Karl Marx
Money is the alienated essence of man’s labor and life; and this alien essence dominates him as he worships it. Karl Marx
…to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner… Karl Marx
Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity. Karl Marx
You must be aware that the reward for labour, and quantity of labour, are quite disparate things. Karl Marx

All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. Karl Marx
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. Karl Marx
The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws. Karl Marx
Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. Karl Marx
Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. Karl Marx

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. [These words are also inscribed upon his grave] Karl Marx
The bourgeoisie is just as necessary a precondition for the socialist revolution as is the proletariat itself. Karl Marx
The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future. Karl Marx
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them. Karl Marx
The theory of Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. Karl Marx

Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through. Karl Marx

Marxism may have had followers and enemies in the course of history; yet, Marx undoubtedly established modern political theory and directly or indirectly influenced the fight for rights of millions of people. We hope that our selection of his quotes you have just read will contribute to your political consciousness and personal inspiration.

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