“Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.”

Capital is dead labour, which, vampire like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Capital is dead labour, which, vampire like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Communism begins where atheism begins.

Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.

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.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

Waiting for the 100 percent right and certain solution leads to delay, indecision, and an inability to execute.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

We’re capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world.

Our ability to connect with others is innate, wired into our nervous systems, and we need connection as much as we need physical nourishment.

It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn’t depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn’t depend on how long you’ve held on to the old view.

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to ‘demand’ its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.