Engels's Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Engels's Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
If darkness was meant to rule it wouldn't be chased away by the Light." -Sheelagh— Brittany L. Engels
this sacrifice of the future of the movement for its present may be 'honestly' meant, but it is and remains opportunism, and 'honest' opportunism is perhaps the most dangerous of all— Frederick Engels
People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.— Friedrich Engels
Naked greed has been the moving spirit of civilization from the first day of its existence to the present time; wealth, more wealth, and wealth again; wealth not of society, but of this shabby individual was its sole and determining aim.— Friedrich Engels
The "dangerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.— Friedrich Engels
The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune.— Friedrich Engels
The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of societythe taking possession of the means of production in the name of societythis is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not abolished. It dies out.— Friedrich Engels
We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends— Friedrich Engels
the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.
The society that will organize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of the state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.— Friedrich Engels
I know him by another name. His real one is Slem, not uncommon for men of his generation. It stands for Stalin Lenin Engels Marx. He's always making up new names for himself— Victor Robert Lee
wouldn't you?
What is certain is that I am not a Marxist, as someone said a long time ago, let us recall, in a witticism reported by Engels. Must we still cite Marx as an authority in order to say "I am not a Marxist"?— Jacques Derrida
The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.— Friedrich Engels
The first class antagonism appearing in history coincides with the development of the antagonism of man and wife in monogamy, and the first class oppression with that of the female by the male sex.— Friedrich Engels
By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium— Friedrich Engels
by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilization as against barbarism, of progress as against stability. Even if the agreements were in Denmark's favor
which is very doubtful-this right carries more weight than all the agreements, for it is the right of historical evolution.
In a political struggle of class against class, organization of trade unions is the most important weapon.— Friedrich Engels
If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from the physical life-process.— Friedrich Engels
The middle classes have a truly extraordinary conception of society. They really believe that human beings ... have real existence only if they make money or help to make it.— Friedrich Engels
We must apologise to the readers for returning with such insistence to the Robinson Crusoe and Friday story, which properly belongs to the nursery and not to the field of science - but how can we help it?— Friedrich Engels
Not democracy caused the downfall of Athens, as the European glorifiers of princes and lickspittle schoolmasters would have us believe, but slavery ostracizing the labor of the free citizen. The— Friedrich Engels
Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe.— Friedrich Engels
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.— Friedrich Engels
A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire ...— Friedrich Engels
It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.— Friedrich Engels
In 10 years, this sleepy Canada will be ripe for annexation - the farmers in Manitoba, etc., will demand it themselves. Besides, the country is half annexed already socially - hotels, newspapers, advertising, etc., all on the American pattern.— Friedrich Engels
Bare-faced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its first dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual, was its only and final aim.— Friedrich Engels
Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.— Friedrich Engels
How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected? The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution.— Friedrich Engels
The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.— Friedrich Engels
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.— Friedrich Engels
It was the Russians that introduced the Chinese to Marxism. Before the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin and Stalin but did not even know of Marx or Engels. The salvos of the October Revolution awoke us to Marxism-Leninism.— Mao Zedong
If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living.— Friedrich Engels
It would be hard to imagine two more improbable founders for a movement as ascetic as communism. While earnestly desiring the downfall of capitalism, Engels made himself rich and comfortable from all its benefits. He kept a stable of fine horses, rode to hounds at weekends, enjoyed the best wines, maintained a mistress, hobnobbed with the elite of Manchester at the fashionable Albert Club - in short, did everything one would expect of a successful member of the gentry. Marx, meanwhile, constantly denounced the bourgeoisie but lived as bourgeois a life as he could manage, sending his daughters to private schools and boasting at every opportunity of his wife's aristocratic background.— Bill Bryson
The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.— Friedrich Engels
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.— Friedrich Engels
Even the head of the military power of a civilized State— Albert Camus
must envy the head of the clan whom patriarchal society surrounded with voluntary respect, not with
respect imposed by the club." Moreover, Engels has firmly established that the concept of the State and
the concept of a free society are irreconcilable. "Classes will disappear as ineluctably as they appeared.
With the disappearance of classes, the State will inevitably disappear. The society that reorganizes
production on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers will
relegate the machine of State to the place it deserves: to the museum of antiquities, side by side with the spinningwheel
and the bronze ax.
The best things in this world are meant to be fought for." -Kearney— Brittany L. Engels
Where you've been or haven't been does not make you who you are." -Faolan— Brittany L. Engels
Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.— Friedrich Engels
Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist.— Friedrich Engels
After Marx died, Engels denied that Marx had said that 'the economic element is the only determining one'. He and Marx, he conceded, were partly to blame for this misinterpretation, for they had emphasized the economic side in opposition to those who rejected it altogether.— Anonymous
Vergleichende Anatomie der Engel.— Gustav Fechner
On the comparative anatomy of angels.
No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.— Friedrich Engels
I might not have faith in many things, but I do have faith in this; that the one who sent me out will allow me to finish the mission." -Regan— Brittany L. Engels
A spectre is haunting Europe - the— Friedrich Engels
The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.— Friedrich Engels
From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.— Friedrich Engels
I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me.— George Jackson
The Shawnees, Miamis and Delawares follow the custom of placing their children into the male gens by giving them a gentile name belonging to the father's gens, so that they may be entitled to inherit. "Innate casuistry of man, to change the objects by changing their names, and to find loopholes for breaking tradition inside of tradition where a direct interest was a sufficient motive." (Marx.)— Friedrich Engels
The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as a dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution. It is not just a matter of understanding the general laws derived by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from their extensive study of real life and revolutionary experience, but of studying their standpoint and method in examining and solving problems.— Mao Zedong
Life is the mode of action of proteins.— Friedrich Engels
In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin - the shapers of humanity's richest present and future.— Paul Robeson
We are indebted to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin for giving us a weapon. The weapon is not a machine-gun, but Marxism-Leninism.— Mao Zedong
I have found that it's not so much how you start, but how you finish that counts." -Declan— Brittany L. Engels
Eleanor Marx was her father's first biographer. All subsequent biographies of Karl Marx, and most of Engels, draw on her work as their primary sources for the family history, often without knowing it. I think if she'd been a son, she would have been referenced more.— Rachel Holmes
She is distinguished from a courtisane only in that she does not offer her body for money by the hour like a commodity, but sells it into slavery for once and all. Fourier's words hold good with respect to all conventional marriages: "As in grammar two negatives make one affirmative, so in matrimonial ethics, two prostitutions are considered as one virtue." Sexual love in man's relation to woman becomes and can become the rule among the oppressed classes alone, among the proletarians of our day - no matter whether this relation is officially sanctioned or not. Here— Friedrich Engels
The word Familia did not originally signify the ideal of our modern philistine, which is a compound of sentimentality and domestic discord. Among the Romans, in the beginning, it did not even refer to the married couple and their children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus means a household slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual. The expression was invented by the romans to describe a new social organism, the head of which had under him wife and children and a number of slaves, under Roman paternal power, with power of life and death over them all.— Friedrich Engels
Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world in various way; the point, however, is to change it— Karl Marx
With the pairing family, therefore, the abduction and barter of women began - widespread symptoms, and nothing but that, of a new and much more profound change.— Friedrich Engels
the organization of a certain number of free and unfree persons into one family under the paternal authority of the head of the family. In the Semitic form this head of the family lives in polygamy, the unfree members have wife and children, and the purpose of the whole organization is the tending of herds in a limited territory.— Friedrich Engels
Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research.— Friedrich Engels
No party has renounced the right to armed resistance, in certain circumstances without lying— Friedrich Engels
The British Labour movement is today, and for many years has been, working in a narrow circle of strikes that are looked upon, not as an expedient, and not as a means of propaganda, but as an ultimate aim.— Friedrich Engels
The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.— Friedrich Engels
What is good for the ruling class, is alleged to be good for the whole of society with which the ruling class identifies itself.— Friedrich Engels
Don't forget any affront done to you and to all our people, the time of revenge will come and must be put to good use.— Friedrich Engels
One day we shall certainly 'reduce' thought experimentally to molecular and chemical motions in the brain; but does that exhaust the essence of thought?— Friedrich Engels
Capitalist production ... was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this.— Friedrich Engels
Without analysis, no synthesis.— Friedrich Engels
The enormous dynamic and creative, as well as destructive energy of capitalism ... is written up with more praise and more respect by Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto than probably by anyone since. I don't think anyone has ever said so precisely and with such awed admiration how great capitalism is, how inventive, how innovative, how dynamic, how much force of creativity it unleashes.— Christopher Hitchens
Freedom is the recognition of necessity.— Friedrich Engels
Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.— Friedrich Engels
Firstly, the farmers, the most stupid set of people in existence, who, clinging to feudal prejudices, burst forth in masses, ready to die rather than cease to obey those whom they, their fathers and grandfathers, had called their masters; and submitted to be trampled on and horse-whipped by.— Friedrich Engels
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.— Friedrich Engels
It might also have helped their cause. Perhaps it is a sign of how eternal Britons once considered their absurd class distinctions that they were comfortable with such mixing. Nonetheless, it was positive - as that devotee of the Cheshire Hounds, Friedrich Engels, appreciated. The author of the "Communist Manifesto" of 1848 considered fox-hunting "the greatest physical pleasure I know", the apogee of English culture and, less convincingly, a source of useful ideas for managing the revolution. What lessons should be drawn from this farrago? The obvious one is that politicians make the laws they deserve. Ill-conceived and illogical, the ban is unworkable. It allows hunts to follow an artificial scent-trail - because an outright ban could criminalise anyone taking his pet dog for a walk in the country. And because it would not be illegal for that pooch to— Anonymous
Maybe it's not about being worthy, or what you have to offer. If it was, wouldn't everyone be turned away?" -Niall— Brittany L. Engels
Monogamy was the first form of the family not founded on natural, but on economic conditions, viz.: the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism.— Friedrich Engels
They say that the Soviet delegates smile. That smile is genuine. It is not artificial. We wish to live in peace, tranquility. But if anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself poorly. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.— Nikita Khrushchev
Competition permits the capitalist to deduct from the price of labour power that which the family earns from its own little garden or field; the workers are compelled to accept any piece wages offered to them, because otherwise they would get nothing at all, and they could not live from the products of their small-scale agriculture alone, and because, on the other hand, it is just this agriculture and landownership which chains them to the spot and prevents them from looking around for other employment.— Friedrich Engels
John Hodgson can describe Richard Dawkins's atheism as vacuous only because 'atheist' is a term which non-believers use purely as a polemical convenience when we have to define concisely what we don't believe [ ... ]. No atheist is principally that. What we'd want to call ourselves is humanist or materialist, or biologist or linguist, or for that matter socialist, because one or more of these, or something else again, is what we do and think and are. We have 'purely and simply finished with God', to adapt a phrase of Engels's.— David Craig
I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together.— Friedrich Engels
![Engels's Sayings By Friedrich Engels: I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/engelss-sayings-by-friedrich-engels-1044149.jpg "Engels's Sayings By Friedrich Engels: I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians")
And the first historical form of sexlove as a passion, as an attribute of every human being (at least of the ruling classes), the specific character of the highest form of the sexual impulse, this first form, the love of the knights in the middle ages, was by no means matrimonial love, but quite the contrary.— Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization.— Rosa Luxemburg
This trail is never-changing, it won't lead you astray. It won't always be easy to follow and at times it will look too narrow for your paws. Follow it anyway, and you'll overcome every challenge you face." -Faolan— Brittany L. Engels
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets.— Friedrich Engels
Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity.— Friedrich Engels
Books are constantly changing the world. If you're a Christian, you have been changed by the Bible, by the word of God, or what was left of it when it was finally wrung through the hands of men. If you are a Muslim, look to the Koran; if a Communist, to Marx and Engels. Don't you see? This world is constantly being altered by books.— John Connolly
You know what capitalism produces. According to Marx and Engels."— Don DeLillo
"Its own grave-diggers," he said.
"But these are not the grave-diggers. This is the free market itself. These people are a fantasy generated by the market. They don't exist outside the market. There is nowhere they can go to be on the outside. There is no outside."
The camera tracked a cop chasing a young man through the crowd, an image that seemed to exist at some drifting distance from the moment.
"The market culture is total. It breeds these men and women. They are necessary to the system they despise. They give it energy and definition. They are market-driven. They are traded on the markets of the world. This is why they exist, to invigorate and perpetuate the system.
In one way or another, these fears echoed the beliefs of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who argued in The Communist Manifesto (1848) that governments in capitalist society were political extensions of the interests of business owners. "The executive of the state," they wrote, was "nothing more than a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."25 Over the following decades, scores of influential followers would advance various arguments that had in common a core theme. Marxists argued that the expansion of capitalism brought with it the reinforcement of class divisions and, through imperialism and the spread of finance capital around the world, the replication of these divisions both within countries and between them.— Moises Naim
Face me and learn that I'm not alone, attack and you'll find that my Leader stands beside me. I will bleed and I may die, but this warrior will not be shaken!" -Regan— Brittany L. Engels
The history of humanity is the history of human freedom ... Freedom is not, as Engels thought, "the recognition of necessity." Freedom is the opposite of necessity. Freedom is necessity overcome. Progress is, in essence, the progress of human freedom. Yes, and after all, life itself is freedom. The evolution of life is the evolution of freedom.— Vasily Grossman
As Engels memorably put it: "The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude; she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.— Anonymous
The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time.— Friedrich Engels
But the degradation of the women was avenged in the men and degraded them also, until they sank into the abomination of boy-love.— Friedrich Engels
Whereas Buddhists believe that the law of nature was discovered by Siddhartha Gautama, Communists believed that the law of nature was discovered by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The similarity does not end there. Like other religions, Communism too has its holy scripts and prophetic books, such as Marx's Das Kapital, which foretold that history would soon end with the inevitable victory of the proletariat.— Yuval Noah Harari
This police force consisted--of slaves. The free Athenian regarded this police duty as so degrading that he preferred being arrested by an armed slave rather than lending himself to such an ignominious service.— Friedrich Engels
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.— Friedrich Engels
Actually, each mental image of the world system is and remains limited, objectively by the historical situation and subjectively by its author's physical and mental constitution.— Friedrich Engels
Marx wrote about finance and industry all his life but he only knew two people connected with financial and industrial processes. One was his uncle in Holland, Lion Philips, a successful businessman who created what eventually became the vast Philips Electric Company. Uncle Philips' views on the whole capitalist process would have been well-informed and interesting, had Marx troubled to explore them. But he only once consulted him, on a technical matter of high finance, and though he visited Philips four times, these concerned purely personal mattes of family money. The other knowledgeable man was Engels himself. But Marx declined Engel's invitation to accompany him on a visit to a cotton mill, and so far as we know Marx never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life.— Paul Johnson
Marx and Engels are arguably history's most famous couple. Such was the closeness of their collaboration that it is not always easy to recall which works bore both names, which just that of Marx, and which just Engels.— Martin Jacques
Without the Ermen & Engels mill in Salford, owned by Friedrich Engels's textile-manufacturing father, the chronically impoverished Marx might well have not survived to pen polemics against textile manufacturers. Something— Terry Eagleton
