Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

Karl Marx Philosopher

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: Germany
  • Born: May 5, 1818
  • Died: Mar 14, 1883

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, and revolutionary socialist. Marx's work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. He is one of the founders of sociology and social science. He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

Born into a wealthy middle-class family in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland, Marx studied at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin where he became interested in the philosophical ideas of the Young Hegelians. After his studies he wrote for a radical newspaper in Cologne and began to work out the theory of the materialist conception of history. He moved to Paris in 1843, where he began writing for other radical newspapers and met Friedrich Engels, who would become his lifelong friend and collaborator. In 1849 he was exiled and moved to London together with his wife and children, where he continued writing and formulating his theories about social and economic activity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolutions are the locomotives of history. history

Religion is the opium of the masses. religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. money