The leading princes are the most servile tools of English despotism. . . . The native princes are the stronghold of the present abominable English system.

Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.

Taxes are the source of life for the bureaucracy, the army and the court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical.

Capitalist agricultural production prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer.

In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

...the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.