The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

A people which subjugates another people forges its own chains.

The Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

Le pouvoir politique, à proprement parler, est le pouvoir organisé d’une classe pour l’oppression d’une autre.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.