Music is the mirror of reality.

Without the presence of class warfare, trade unions would be hard put to justfy their existence.

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.

Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.

Religion is the opiate of the people.

Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.

The state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities.