Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

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

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.Workingmen of all countries unite!

El poder político es simplemente el poder organizado de una clase para oprimir a otra.

A people which subjugates another people forges its own chains.

The heart of a man is a wonderful thing, especially when it is carried in his wallet.

No revolution is made out of shame. I reply: Shame is already revolution of a kind

...it happens that "society is saved" as often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy is forthwith punished as an "assault upon society" and is branded as "Socialism.