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

Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

The imaginary flowers of religion adorn man's chains. Man must throw off the flowers, and also the chains.

The consciousness of the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the laborer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.

Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.

There is only one effective antidote for mental suffering and that is physical pain.