Selected Essays Quotes

“The gods of Greece, once tragically wounded to death in the chained Prometheus of Æschylus, were fated to die a comic death in Lucian's dialogues”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“We were restored, in the first place, because other nations dared to make a revolution, and, in the second place, because other nations suffered a counter revolution: in the first place, because our masters were afraid, and, in the second place, because they regained their courage.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“The real pressure must be made more oppressive by making men conscious of the pressure, and the disgrace more disgraceful by publishing it.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“Criticism has already settled all accounts with this subject. It no longer figures as an end in itself, but only as a means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential work is denunciation.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“The head of this emancipation is philosophy; its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy cannot be realized without the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot abolish itself without realizing philosophy.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“Theory becomes realized among a people only in so far as it represents the realization of that people's needs.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“History is thorough, and passes through many phases when it bears an old figure to the grave. The last phase of a world historical figure is its comedy.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“In the so-called Christian State it is true that alienation counts, but not the individual. The only individual who counts, the king, is a being specially distinguished from other individuals, who is also religious and directly connected with heaven, with God. The relations which here prevail are still relations of faith. The religious spirit is therefore not yet really secularized.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays

“If the State is to have reality as the ethical, self-conscious realization of spirit, it must be distinguished from the form of authority and faith. But this distinction arises only in so far as the ecclesiastical side is in itself divided into several churches. Then only is the State seen to be superior to them, and wins and brings into existence the universality of thought as the principle of its form.”
― Karl Marx, Selected Essays