As Prometheus, having stolen fire from heaven, begins to build houses and to settle upon the earth, so philosophy, expanded to be the whole world, turns against the world of appearance. The same now with the philosophy of Hegel. -- Marx, Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, 1839

Socialists cannot achieve their great aim without fighting against all oppression of nations. -- Lenin, Socialism and War (1915)

"Guerrillaism" was the military expression of the peasant background of the revolution. -- Trotsky, Preface to the Military Writings (1923)

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this. -- Karl Marx

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy. -- Karl Marx

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science. -- Marx, Private Property and Communism (1844)

In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage. -- "Serve the People" (September 8, 1944), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 227-28.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains. -- Karl Marx

The most important thing is to know how to awaken in the still undeveloped masses an intelligent attitude towards religious questions and an intelligent criticism of religions. -- Lenin, The Significance of Militant Materialism (1922)

Convert the imperialist war into civil war. -- Lenin, Socialism and War (1915)

We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong. -- "The Present Situation and Our Tasks" (December 25, 1947), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 173.

The History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning. -- Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1831)

Mechanical centralism is necessarily complemented by factionalism, which is at once a malicious caricature of democracy and a potential political danger. -- Trotsky, Letter to Party Meetings (1923)

When the masses are digesting a new and exceptionally rich experience of direct revolutionary struggle, the theoretical struggle for a revolutionary outlook, i.e., for revolutionary Marxism, becomes the watchword of the day. -- Lenin, Two Letters (1908)

If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get -- Bill Haywood

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. -- Karl Marx

Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. -- Peter Kropotkin

We can't oppose compulsory military training by the bourgeois state just as we can't oppose compulsory education by the bourgeois state. Military training in our eyes is a part of education. -- Trotsky, On Conscription (1940)

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. -- Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 4 (1867)

Modern society, which, soon after its birth, pulled Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth, greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of the very principle of its own life. -- Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 3 (1867)

In general it is always empirical businessmen we are talking about when we refer to political economists, (who represent) their scientific creed and form of existence. -- Marx, Human Requirements and Division of Labour (1844)

An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy. -- "The United Front in Cultural Work" (October 30, 1944), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 235.

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass. -- Karl Marx

We Communists are like seeds and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them. -- "On the Chungking Negotiations" (October 17, 1945), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 58.

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. -- Karl Marx

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism. -- Karl Marx

This is a kind of mutual reconciliation society... Actual extremes cannot be mediated with each other precisely because they are actual extremes. But neither are they in need of mediation, because they are opposed in essence. -- Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)

The so-called Great Powers have long been exploiting and enslaving a whole number of small and weak nations. And the imperialist war is a war for the division and redivision of this kind of booty. -- Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)

Every Communist working in the mass movements should be a friend of the masses and not a boss over them, an indefatigable teacher and not a bureaucratic politician. -- "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War" (October 1938), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. II.

Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion. -- Lord Acton in 'Nationality', in The Home and Foreign Review (July 1862).

The price or money-form of commodities is, like their form of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable bodily form; it is, therefore, a purely ideal or mental form -- Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 3 (1867)

In all mass movements we must make a basic investigation and analysis of the number of active supporters, opponents and neutrals and must not decide problems subjectively and without basis. -- "Methods of Work of Party Committees" (March 13, 1949), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 380.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains. -- Rosa Luxemburg

A revolution is "made" directly by a minority. -- Trotsky, Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt (1938)

All past history was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange. -- Engels, Anti-Dühring (1877)

Our schoolteacher should be raised to a standard he has never achieved, and cannot achieve, in bourgeois society. This is a truism and requires no proof. -- Lenin, Pages from a Diary (1923)

A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished. -- Mikhail Bakunin

What we need is an enthusiastic but calm state of mind and intense but orderly work. -- "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War" (December 1936), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 211.

In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international. -- Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, "Dogmatism And 'Freedom of Criticism'" (1904)

The most violent element in society is ignorance. -- Emma Goldman

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society. -- Karl Marx

The working class cannot play its world-revolutionary role unless it wages a ruthless struggle against this renegacy. spinelessness, subservience to opportunism and unexampled vulgarization of the theories of Marxism. -- Lenin, Socialism and War (1915)

That today, when the wave has ebbed, there remain and will remain only real Marxists, does not frighten us but rejoices us. -- Lenin, Two Letters (1908)

All economists share the error of examining surplus-value not as such, in its pure form, but in the particular forms of profit and rent. -- Marx, Theories of Surplus Value (1863)

To save the Russian commune, a Russian revolution is needed. -- Marx, Letter To Vera Zasulich (1881)

Art must make its own way and by its own means. The Marxian methods are not the same as the artistic. The party leads the proletariat but not the historic processes of history. -- Trotsky, Communist Policy Toward Art (1923)

Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. -- Marx, The Grundrisse (1857)

There are two big facts which have set a new stamp on working class life. The one is the advent of the eight-hour working day; the other, the prohibition of the sale of vodka. -- Trotsky, Vodka, the Church and the Cinema (1923)

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

Communists should set an example in study; at all times they should be pupils of the masses as well as their teachers. -- "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War" (October 1938), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 198.