In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

If one wants to be an ox one can easily turn one's back on hum suffering and look after one's own skin.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

Since only what is material is perceptible, knowable, nothing is known of the existence of God.

In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety.

But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.... The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.