81 Quotes by Friedrich Engels

  • Author Friedrich Engels
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    From the moment when the bourgeois demand for the abolition of class privileges was put forward, alongside it appeared the proletarian demand for the abolition of the classes themselves. [...] The proletarians took the bourgeoisie at its word: equality must not be merely apparent, must not apply merely to the sphere of the state, but must also be real, must also be extended to the social, economic sphere. [...] Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity.

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  • Author Friedrich Engels
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    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.

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  • Author Friedrich Engels
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    History does nothing, it possesses no immense wealth, it wages no battles. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; history is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.

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  • Author Friedrich Engels
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    If the world had ever been in a state in which no change whatever was taking place, how could it pass from this state to one of change? The absolutely unchanging, especially when it has been in this state from eternity, cannot possibly get out of such a state by itself and pass over into a state of motion and change. An initial impulse must have therefore come from outside [...] But as everyone knows, the "initial impulse" is only another expression for God.

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  • Author Friedrich Engels
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    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.

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  • Author Friedrich Engels
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    Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

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  • Author Friedrich Engels
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    The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

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