“For price is everywhere regulated by the return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent whatever is paid.”

Whether a bank lent one million, ten million, or a hundred millions, they would not permanently alter the market rate of interest; they would alter only the value of the money they issued.

Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal.

Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, has its natural and its market price.

Whenever the current of money is forcibly stopped, and when money is prevented from settling at its just level, there are no limits to the possible variations of the exchange.

The exchangeable value of all commodities rises as the difficulties of their production increase.

Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.

I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.

No extension of foreign trade will immediately increase the amount of value in a country, although it will very powerfully contribute to increase the mass of commodities and therefore the sum of enjoyments.

Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils.

But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.

But it is clear that the price of labour has no necessary connection with the price of food, since it depends entirely on the supply of labourers compared with the demand.

If a tax on malt would raise the price of beer, a tax on bread must raise the price of bread.

The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.

The interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interests of every other class in the community.

Gold, on the contrary, though of little use compared with air or water, will exchange for a great quantity of other goods.

In the same manner if any nation wasted part of its wealth, or lost part of its trade, it could not retain the same quantity of circulating medium which it before possessed.

Again two manufacturers may employ the same amount of fixed, and the same amount of circulating capital; but the durability of their fixed capitals may be very unequal.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.

All the parties of capitalist society, all its moralists and all its sycophants will perish beneath the debris of the impending catastrophe. The only party that will survive is the party of the world socialist revolution.

In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king’s death or upon the identity of his successor.

There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

There exists, between people in love, a kind of capital held by each.