“ The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. ”

“ History does nothing it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this. ”

“ The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles. ”

“ It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends. ”

“ The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it. ”

“ Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity. ”

“ Religion is the opium of the masses. ”

“ Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. ”

“ In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. ”

“ The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. ”