“Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand.”

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

Merely quantitative differences, beyond a certain point, pass into qualitative changes.

In reality, the laborer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital.

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions.

Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps.

The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.

Taxes are the source of life for the bureaucracy, the army and the court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

To be radical is to go to the root of the matter. For man, however, the root is man himself.

People who make you laugh, who help you when you’re in need. People who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your life. Everyone else is just passing through.

Perseus wore a magic cap down over his eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Ignorance never yet helped anybody.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Women’s Wear Daily can do more than any other publication to establish a designer.

Style must be adapted to the woman and not vice versa. The same can be said of clothes.

I’m a sexual person, and that’s reflected in my clothes and my advertisements.

We’re not doing outrageous fashion; I make sports clothes that are relatively conservative, clothes that everyone wears.

I like nice clothes, whether they’re dodgy or not.

After you die, you wear what you are.

There were two saints in the desert, who had sewed thorns into all their clothes; and we seek for nothing but comfort!

My wardrobe consists of antique clothes, many of my designs, plus shoes and shirts from Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart.