He was a German philosopher, economist, and sociologist of great depth for his time. A critic of capitalism, he proposed his view of reality in Das Kapital, his outstanding work.

Karl Marx

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

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

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

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

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

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

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

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.

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

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

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 history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

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

Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.

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.

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

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

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

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.

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

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

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.

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.

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.

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

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.

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.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

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.

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

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.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

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.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

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.

The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

I am nothing but I must be everything.

To be radical is to grasp things by the root.

Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

The proletarians have nothing to loose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.

If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation?

He was an ancient Greek philosopher and writer. With his teacher Socrates and his student Aristotle, he laid the foundations of Western philosophical thought.

Plato

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Necessity... the mother of invention.

Science is nothing but perception.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns.

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return.

Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

It is right to give every man his due.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Life must be lived as play.

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

The good is the beautiful.

Man - a being in search of meaning.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

The god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it's almost impossible to stamp out.

There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

Democracy passes into despotism.

Courage is a kind of salvation.

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

They certainly give very strange names to diseases.

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.

As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise.

He was a philosopher and politician, spokesman for the philosophical current of Stoicism, and considered one of the most outstanding teachers of life of all time.

Seneca

It does not matter how many books you have but how good the books are.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

He who is brave is free.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

Studying quotes to truly understand their meaning

Karl Marx

Plato

Seneca

Socrates

Niccolo Machiavelli

Rene Descartes

Confucius

Alfred Adler

Laozi

Martin Heidegger

Baruch Spinoza

Immanuel Kant

John Locke

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thomas Aquinas

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Paul Sartre

Ludwig Wittgenstein

David Hume

John Stuart Mill

Michel Foucault

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