"Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research."

"The state is not abolished, it withers away."

"Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist."

"It would appear that the natural frontier of Russia runs from Dantzic or perhaps Stettin to Trieste."

"Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment."

"The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune."

"It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts."

"The middle classes have a truly extraordinary conception of society. They really believe that human beings . . . have real existence only if they make money or help to make it."

"If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from the physical life-process."

"And what is impossible to science?"

"The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

"How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected? The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution."

"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 civilization as against barbarism, of progress as against stability. Even if the agreements were in Denmark's favor -- which is very doubtful-this right carries more weight than all the agreements, for it is the right of historical evolution."

"Life is the mode of action of proteins."

"Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty."

"A change in Quantity also entails a change in Quality"

"Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends."

"What is good for the ruling class, is alleged to be good for the whole of society with which the ruling class identifies itself."

"What is Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. What is the proletariat? The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor...."

"Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves."

"The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

"The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles."

"Actually, each mental image of the world system is and remains limited, objectively by the historical situation and subjectively by its author's physical and mental constitution."

"What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed."

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

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

"Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal."

"Without analysis, no synthesis."

"All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development."

"The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy."

"Freedom is the recognition of necessity."

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

"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."

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

"It is "hard "enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!"

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed."

""There "are no facts, only interpretations."

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

"The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends."

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."