As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.

The rule of the bourgeois democrats [in pre-federal Germany], from the very first, will carry within it the seeds of its own destruction

Follow your own path, no matter what people say.

When the labourer co-operates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.

History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men pursuing their purposes.

[Napoleon] swept away everywhere the establishments of feudality. ... [He was] Caesar himself.

Russia is a name usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs; they do not belong to the Indo-Germanic race at all, they are des intrus [intruders], who must be chased back across the Dnieper, etc.