Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Keep people from their history, and they are easily controlled.