“Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.”

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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

Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.

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

All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

Take away a nation’s heritage and they are more easily persuaded.

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

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

In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.

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

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

My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation.

I am a machine condemned to devour books.

It’s what we live for, to be able to make great illusions.

Everything is an illusion.

We are tempted to live under the illusion that somewhere out there are people who are normal.

Death is nothing, nor life either, for that matter. To die, to sleep, to pass into nothingness, what does it matter? Everything is an illusion.

One of the great illusions of our time is that hurrying will buy us more time.

One sometimes weeps over one’s illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.

Do not be proud of wealth, people, relations and friends, or youth. All these are snatched by time in the blink of an eye. Giving up this illusory world, know and attain the Supreme.

If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.