Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.

But the more these conscious illusions of the ruling class are shown to be false and the less they satisfy common sense, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of established society.

Bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work.

Advances in science help to delegitimize the rule of kings and the power of the Church.

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.

Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.