I am stretching out this volume, since those German dogs estimate the value of books by their cubic contents.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.

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 more a ruling class is able to assimilate the most prominent men of a ruled class, the more solid and dangerous its rule.

Religion is the opium of the people translated from the German Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkessometimes misquoted as opiate of the people.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.