Karl Marx Quotes

Karl Marx's collection of the most iconic quotations and thoughts.


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


Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.


Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.


Democracy is the road to socialism.


The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.


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


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


The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.


Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!


Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.


About Karl Marx:
was a philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Germany, he later became stateless and spent much of his life in London in the United Kingdom. Marx's work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867–1894).

Born into a wealthy middle-class family in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn and Berlin where he became interested in the philosophical ideas of the Young Hegelians. After his studies he wrote for Rheinische Zeitung, a radical newspaper in Cologne, and began to work out the theory of the materialist conception of history. He moved to Paris in 1843, where he began writing for other radical newspapers and met Friedrich Engels, who would become his lifelong friend and collaborator. In 1849 he was exiled and moved to London together with his wife and children, where he continued writing and formulating his theories about social and economic activity. He also campaigned for socialism and became a significant figure in the International Workingmen's Association.