Karl Marx Quotes
Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher, economist, historian, and revolutionary socialist whose work founded the tradition of thought that bears his name. With Friedrich Engels he co-authored the Communist Manifesto in 1848, and his major theoretical work, Capital, set out a systematic analysis of capitalist production, value, and class. The quotes below are attributed to Karl Marx, organized by topic.
Browse Karl Marx by topic
Karl Marx on Death
-
“Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern. [2]”
1840s | 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; th -
“Die Gesellschaft besteht nicht aus Individuen, sondern drückt die Summe der Beziehungen, Verhältnisse aus, worin diese Individuen zueinander stehn.”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Any society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of relationships [and] conditions that the individual actor is forming. MEW Vol. 42, p. 176. -
“Denn der Kapitalismus ist schon in der Grundlage aufgehoben durch die Voraussetzung, daß der Genuß als treibendes Motiv wirkt, nicht die Bereicherung selbst.”
Das Kapital(Buch II)(1893) | For capitalism is abolished root and branch by the bare assumption that it is personal consumption and not enrichment that works as the compelling motive. Vol. II, Ch. IV, p. 123.
Karl Marx on Freedom
-
Attributed to Karl Marx:
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.”
-
“It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.”
Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (25 January 1843), after the Prussian government dissolved the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung , of which Marx was the editor.
Karl Marx on God
-
Attributed to 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.”
-
“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God , is chosen for hell .”
The Pale Maiden” (1837) ballad
Karl Marx on Justice
-
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-ope -
“If conquest constitutes a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them.”
1860s | The Abolition of Landed Property Letter to Robert Applegarth (3 December 1869) -
“I have just noticed in the 2nd edition of The Times that the Prussian Second Chamber has finally done something worthwhile. We shall soon have revolution.”
1860s | Letter to Friedrich Engels (21 February 1863), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860–64 (2010), p. 461 -
“Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. Paragraph 47, lines 7-9.”
Section IBourgeoisieandProletariat -
“The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to make money, without producing at all.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 7, pg. 213.
Karl Marx on Knowledge
-
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern. -
“The Pale Maiden” (1837) ballad”
Thus heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God , is chosen for hell . -
“With disdain I will throw my gauntlet”
Wikiquote -
“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.”
As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (1848), p.2 -
“And your education ! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.”
As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20. -
“I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Author's prefaces to the First Edition. -
“As for the commercial business, I can no longer make head or tail of it. At one moment crisis seems imminent and the City prostrated, the next everything is set fair. I know that none of this will have any impact on the catastrophe.”
1850s | Letter to Friedrich Engels (4 February 1852), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 39. Letters 1852–55 (2010), p. 32
Karl Marx on Life
-
“In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 17, Section IV, pg. 581. -
“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.”
The German Ideology(1845-1846) | Volume I; Part 1; "Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook"; Section A, "Idealism and Materialism ". -
“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. -
“Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth,it buys as long as it has the means to buy.”
Das Kapital(Buch II)(1893) | Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 449.
Karl Marx on Love
-
“We see then, commodities are in love with money, but "the course of true love never did run smooth".”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 2, pg. 121. -
“Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love .”
The German Ideology(1845-1846) | The German Ideology , International Publishers, ed. Chris Arthur, p. 103. -
“Is a fixed income not a good thing? Does not everyone love to count on a sure thing? Especially every petty-bourgeois, narrow-minded Frenchman? the 'ever needy' man?”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | (Bastiat and Carey), pp. 809–810.
Karl Marx on Mind
-
“In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur.”
Das Kapital(Buch II)(1893) | Vol. II, Ch. XVI, p. 319.
Karl Marx on Nature
-
“Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Introduction, p. 10. -
“But capitalist production begets,with the inexorability of a law of Nature,its own negation. It is the negation of negation.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837. -
“But there is a devil of a difference between barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and civilized people who apply them selves to everything.”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Introduction, p. 25. -
“Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocale, was,thenceforth, the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 4(e), pg. 742. -
“The entire process seems simple and natural, i.e., possesses the naturalness of a shallow rationalism.”
Das Kapital(Buch II)(1893) | Vol. II, Ch. III, p. 95.
Karl Marx on Politics
-
Attributed to Karl Marx:
“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
-
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (1848), p.2 -
Attributed to Karl Marx:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.”
-
“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour.”
Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 1, p. 257. -
“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”
As quoted in the Communist Manifesto (1848) p. 7 -
“This much is certain, the ERA OF REVOLUTION has now FAIRLY OPENED IN EUROPE once more. And the general state of affairs is good.”
1860s | Letter to Friedrich Engels (13 February 1863), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860–64 (2010), p. 453 -
“Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises out of exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same.”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 85.
Karl Marx on Time
-
Attributed to Karl Marx:
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
-
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”
The Communist Manifesto, 1848 -
“History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.”
1840s | The Holy Family , Ch. VI (1845). -
“Manufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the hoe market, by monopolies in the colonial market , and broad as much as possible by differential duties.”
The German Ideology(1845-1846) | ibid, pp. 183 -
“The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production.”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Introduction, p. 14. -
“The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Author's prefaces to the First Edition. -
“"The Future Results of British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune , 08 August 1853”
1850s
Karl Marx on Truth
-
“Classical political economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however,consciously formulating it. This it cannot so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 19, pg. 594.
Things actually not said by Karl Marx
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Karl Marx but are in fact from someone else. Did Karl Marx say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Leo Tolstoy in Romance and Reality (1912) by Holbrook Jackson.
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Paraphrased and misattributed, actually from "Die Musik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihre Pflege: Methode der Musik" ("The Music of the Nineteenth Century, and its Culture") by Adolf Bernhard Marx : "Die Kunst ist stets und überall das geheime Bekenntnis und unsterbliche Denkmal ihrer Zeit." ("A
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Said to be a quote from Das Kapital in an anonymous email, this attribution has been debunked at Snopes.com with the earliest occurrence found being a post by Gpkkid on 23 December 2008 ; it was used as a basis of a satirical article "Americans to Undergo Preschool Reeducation in Advance of Country'
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Often attributed to Lenin or Stalin , less often to Marx. According to the book, "They Never Said It", p. 64, the phrase derives from a rumour that Lenin said this to one of his close associates, Grigori Zinoviev, not long after a meeting of the Politburo in the early 1920s, but there is no evidence
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“If we were to hang the last capitalist, another would appear to sell us the rope.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: A variant of the above misquote, sometimes also attributed to Lenin. This gained popularity during the glasnost era when black market activity was at its most visible in the USSR; meant to show the profit motive was human nature and cannot be eradicated.
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“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.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Karl Marx, a composer with the same name.
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Marx (possibly in jest) in W. C. Privy's Original Bathroom Companion (2003).
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Written in a letter to Francois Lafargue in Bordeaux, 12 November 1866 as published in MECW Volume 42, p. 334. as "That a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything," which was a restating of the phrase wine, women and song that was attributed to Martin Luther at that time.
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason (1905): 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' The popular reformulation as 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' compresses and slightly alters Santayana's wording. The line is also frequently misattributed to Edmund Burke and Winston Churchill, neither of whom wrote it.
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.”
Actually from State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin , paraphrasing Marx in The Civil War in France .
-
Did Karl Marx say this? No.
“Democracy is the road to socialism.”
Attributed to Marx in recent years, including in Communism (2007) by Tom Lansford, p. 48, but the earliest occurrence of this yet located is in The Communist Review (1952) by the Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 15, where it is used to characterize the Communist agenda. (Disputed.)