Friedrich Engels Quotes on Knowledge
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), Marx's collaborator and the principal editor of the second and third volumes of Capital, gave the Marxian theory of knowledge much of its mature philosophical articulation in Anti-Dühring (1878), Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886), and the unfinished Dialectics of Nature. The framework presents knowledge as the historically situated reflection of an objectively existing material world, refined through the feedback loop between social-productive practice and theoretical articulation, and undergoing dialectical transformation as the contradictions of each phase generate the cognitive resources for the next.
Quotes
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Attributed to Friedrich Engels:
“Freedom is the recognition of necessity.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Engels:
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”
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Attributed to Friedrich Engels:
“The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life is the basis of all social structure.”
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“Written under the pseudonym of Friedrich Oswald, “Telegraph für Deutschland”, Telegraph für Deutschland , Nos. 2-5, (January 1841)”
For I am of the opinion... that the reconquest of the German speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East? -
“Today I have shaved my moustache off again and buried the youthful corpse with much wailing. I look like a woman; it is shameful; and if I had known that without a moustache I should look such a sight I would not have hacked it off. As I stood before the mirror, scissors in hand, and had shorn off the right side, the Old Man came into the office and had to laugh out loud, when he saw me with half ”
Letter to his sister, Marie (February 18, 1841) -
“The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).”
For the first time in the revolutionary movement of 1848 , for the first time since 1793 , a nation surrounded by superior counter-revolutionary forces dares to counter the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury by revolutionary passion , the terreur blanche by the terreur rouge . For the first time after a long period we meet with a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dar -
“The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).”
There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples ( Völkerruinen ), the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development . These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual -
“The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).”
How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis? The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the nationalities in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these nations, large and small. All the earlier history of Austria up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Aus