“The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.”

The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.

It is a curious fact that with every great revolutionary movement the question of ‘free love’ comes into the foreground.

One day we shall certainly ‘reduce’ thought experimentally to molecular and chemical motions in the brain; but does that exhaust the essence of thought?

If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn’t be worth living.

No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of which the rage of 1795 gives no true idea. The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged.

Without analysis, no synthesis.

All history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development.

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain.

Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity.

In a political struggle of class against class, organization of trade unions is the most important weapon.

Life is the mode of action of proteins.

We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends — the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.

Don’t forget any affront done to you and to all our people, the time of revenge will come and must be put to good use.