text:
Gladiator (2000 film)

Gladiator is a 2000 film about a Roman general who became a slave and then rose to challenge an emperor.
 * Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by David Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson.

What We Do In Life Echoes In Eternity. taglines

Maximus

 * Fratres! Three weeks from now I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. Hold the line. Stay with me. If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled; for you are in Elysium, and you're already dead! [The soldiers laugh] Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity.
 * At my signal, unleash hell.
 * My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius. Commander of the Armies of the North. General of the Felix Legions. Loyal servant to the true Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife – and I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.
 * [addressing crowd after killing gladiator in solo fight] Are you not entertained? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?! Is this not why you are here?! [throws away sword and spits at the ground, then leaves]
 * Quintus, free my men. Senator Gracchus is to be reinstated. There was a dream that was Rome, it shall be realized. These are the wishes of Marcus Aurelius.

Proximo

 * I am Proximo! I will be closer to you in these next few days, which will be the last days of your miserable lives, than that bitch of a mother who first brought you screaming into this world! I did not pay good money for your company, I paid it so I could profit from your deaths! And just as your mother was there at your beginning, so I shall be there at your end. And when you die — and die you shall — your transition will be to the sound of … [claps his hands] Gladiators, I salute you.

Dialogue

 * Maximus: You sent for me, Caesar?
 * Marcus Aurelius: Tell me again, Maximus, why are we here?
 * Maximus: For the glory of the empire, sire.
 * Marcus Aurelius: Ah, yes. Ah, yes, I remember. Do you see that map, Maximus? That is the world which I created. For 25 years, I have conquered, spilt blood, expanded the empire. Since I became Caesar, I have known four years without war, four years of peace in twenty. And for what? I brought the sword. Nothing more.
 * Maximus: Caesar, your life...
 * Marcus Aurelius: Please. Please, don't call me that. Please, come sit. Let us talk together now, very simply, as men. Maximus, talk.
 * Maximus: Five thousand of my men are out there in the freezing mud. Three thousand of them are bloodied and cleaved. Two thousand will never leave this place. I will not believe that they fought and died for nothing.
 * Marcus Aurelius: And what would you believe?
 * Maximus: They fought for you and for Rome.
 * Marcus Aurelius: And what is Rome, Maximus?
 * Maximus: I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light.
 * Marcus Aurelius: Yet you have never been there. You have not seen what it has become. I am dying, Maximus. When a man sees his end... he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. How will the world speak my name in years to come? Will I be known as the philosopher? The warrior? The tyrant...? Or will I be the emperor who gave Rome back her true self? There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter. Maximus, let us whisper now, together, you and I. You have a son. Tell me about your home.
 * Maximus: My house is in the hills above Trujillo. A very simple place. Pinkstones that warm in the sun. A kitchen garden that smells of herbs in the day, jasmine in the evening. Through the gate is a giant poplar. Figs, apples, pears. The soil, Marcus- black. Black like my wife's hair. Grapes on the south slopes, olives on the north. Wild ponies play near my house. They tease my son. He wants to be one of them.
 * Marcus Aurelius: Remember the last time you were home?
 * Maximus: Two years, 264 days, and this morning.
 * Marcus Aurelius: I envy you, Maximus. It's a good home. Worth fighting for. There is one more duty that I ask of you before you go home.
 * Maximus: What would you have me do, Caesar?
 * Marcus Aurelius: I want you to become the protector of Rome after I die. I will empower you to one end alone: To give power back to the people of Rome, and end the corruption that has crippled it. Will you accept this great honor I have offered you?
 * Maximus: With all my heart, no.
 * Marcus Aurelius: Maximus, that is why it must be you.
 * Maximus: But surely a prefect, a senator, somebody who knows the city, who understands her politics?
 * Marcus Aurelius: But you have not been corrupted by her politics.
 * Maximus: And Commodus?
 * Marcus Aurelius: Commodus is not a moral man. You have known that since you were young. Commodus cannot rule. He must not rule. You are the son that I should have had. Commodus will accept my decision. He knows that you command the loyalty of the army.
 * Maximus: I need some time, sire.
 * Marcus Aurelius: Yes. By sunset, I hope you will have agreed. Now embrace me as my son, and bring an old man another blanket.

 * Marcus Aurelius: Are you ready to do your duty for Rome?
 * Commodus: Yes, father.
 * Marcus Aurelius: You will not be emperor.
 * Commodus: Which wiser, older man is to take my place?
 * Marcus Aurelius: My powers will pass to Maximus, to hold in trust until the Senate is ready to rule once more. Rome is to be a republic again.
 * Commodus: Maximus.
 * Marcus Aurelius: My decision disappoints you?
 * Commodus: You wrote to me once, listing the four chief virtues: wisdom, justice, fortitude and temperance. As I read the list, I knew I had none of them. But I have other virtues, father. Ambition. That can be a virtue when it drives us to excel. Resourcefulness. Courage. Perhaps not on the battlefield, but … there are many forms of courage. Devotion, to my family and to you. But none of my virtues were on your list. [choking up] Even then it was as if you didn't want me for your son.
 * Marcus Aurelius: Oh, Commodus. You go too far.
 * Commodus: I search the faces of the gods … for ways to please you, to make you proud. One kind word, one full hug … where you pressed me to your chest and held me tight … would have been like the sun on my heart for a thousand years. What is it in me that you hate so much?
 * Marcus Aurelius: Shh, Commodus.
 * Commodus: All I've ever wanted was to live up to you, Caesar, father.
 * Marcus Aurelius: [gets down on his knees] Commodus, your faults as a son is my failure as a father. Come.
 * [They hug]
 * Commodus: [crying] Father. I would have butchered the whole world [presses Marcus against his breast and asphyxiates him] … if you would only love me!

 * Gracchus: For you guidance, Caesar, the Senate has prepared a series of protocols, to begin addressing the many problems in the city, beginning with basic sanitation for the Greek quarter, to combat the plague which is already springing up there. So, if Caesar...
 * Commodus: Shh. Don't you see, Gracchus? That's the very problem, isn't it? My father spent all his time at study, at books and learning and philosophy. He spent his twilight hours reading scrolls from the Senate. And all the while, the people were forgotten.
 * Gracchus: But the Senate is the people, sire. Chosen from among the people, to speak for the people.
 * Commodus: I doubt if any of the people eat so well as you do, Gracchus. Or have such splendid mistresses, Gaius. I think I understand my own people.
 * Gracchus: Then perhaps Caesar will be so good as to teach us … out of his own, extensive experience.
 * [The Senate laughs]
 * Commodus: I call it love. I am their father, the people are my children. I shall hold them to my bosom and embrace them tightly –
 * Gracchus: Have you ever embraced someone dying of plague, sire?
 * Commodus: No. But if you interrupt me again, I assure you that you shall.

 * Falco: Games. One hundred and fifty days of games.
 * Gracchus: He's cleverer than I thought.
 * Falco: "Clever"! The whole of Rome would be laughing at him, if they weren't so afraid of his Praetorian.
 * Gracchus: Fear and wonder, a powerful combination.
 * Falco: You really think people are going to be seduced by that?
 * Gracchus: [about Commodus] I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they'll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it's the sand of the Colosseum. He'll bring them death…and they will love him for it.

 * Maximus: You ask me what I want. I, too, want to stand before the Emperor as you did.
 * Proximo: Then listen to me. Learn from me. I wasn't the best because I killed quickly. I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd, and you will win your freedom.
 * Maximus: I will win the crowd. I will give them something they have never seen before.

 * Juba: It's somewhere out there. My country. My home. My wife is preparing food. My daughters carry water from the river. Will I ever see them again? I think not.
 * Maximus: Do you believe you'll see them again when you die?
 * Juba: I think so. But then, I will die soon. They will not die for many years. I'll have to wait.
 * Maximus: But you would … wait?
 * Juba: Of course.
 * Maximus: You see, my wife and my son are already waiting for me.
 * Juba: You'll meet them again. But not yet. Not yet.
 * [They shake hands]
 * Maximus: Not yet. … Not yet.

 * Juba: Can they hear you?
 * Maximus: Who?
 * Juba: Your family, in the afterlife.
 * Maximus: Oh yes.
 * Juba: What do you say to them?
 * Maximus: To my son, I tell him I will see him again soon. To keep his heels down while riding his horse. To my wife – that is not your business.
 * [They laugh]

 * Commodus: "Maximus... Maximus... Maximus..." They call for you. The general who became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor. Striking story! Now the people want to know how the story ends. Only a famous death will do. And what could be more glorious than to challenge the Emperor himself in the great arena?
 * Maximus: You would fight me?
 * Commodus: Why not? Do you think I am afraid?
 * Maximus: I think you've been afraid all your life.
 * Commodus: Unlike Maximus the invincible, who knows no fear?
 * Maximus: I knew a man once who said, 'Death smiles at us all. All that man can do is smile back.'
 * Commodus: I wonder, did your friend smile at his own death?
 * Maximus: You must know. He was your father.
 * Commodus: You loved my father, I know. But so did I. That makes us brothers, doesn't it? Smile for me now, brother! [stabs Maximus in the side, then turns to Quintius] Strap on his armour. Conceal the wound.

Taglines

 * What We Do In Life Echoes In Eternity.
 * A Hero Will Rise.
 * The Gladiator Who Defied An Emperor.
 * The general who became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor.
 * Strength and Honor.
 * Shadow and Dust.
 * Are you not entertained?

Cast

 * Russell Crowe – Maximus
 * Joaquin Phoenix – Commodus
 * Connie Nielsen – Lucilla
 * Oliver Reed – Proximo
 * Richard Harris – Marcus Aurelius
 * Derek Jacobi – Senator Gracchus
 * Ralf Moller – Hagen
 * Djimon Hounsou – Juba

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Gladiator (2000 film)


text:
Friedrich Engels

 (November 28, 1820 – August 5, 1895) was a 19th-century German philosopher, social scientist, and journalist. He created Marxist theory together with Karl Marx. In 1845, he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in.

In 1848, he co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx, and he also authored and co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works. He later supported Marx financially to do research and write . After Marx's death, Engels edited the second and third volumes. Additionally, Engels organised Marx's notes on the , which he later published as the "fourth volume" of Capital.

Quotes

 * For I am of the opinion... that the reconquest of the German speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?
 * Written under the pseudonym of Friedrich Oswald, “Telegraph für Deutschland”, Telegraph für Deutschland, Nos. 2-5, (January 1841)
 * Today I have shaved my moustache off again and buried the youthful corpse with much wailing. I look like a woman; it is shameful; and if I had known that without a moustache I should look such a sight I would not have hacked it off. As I stood before the mirror, scissors in hand, and had shorn off the right side, the Old Man came into the office and had to laugh out loud, when he saw me with half a moustache. But now I shall let it grow again, for I cannot show myself anywhere. In the Academy of Singing I was the only one with a moustache and always used to laugh at the philistines who could not marvel enough that I had the audacity to go so unshaven into decent society. The ladies, incidentally, liked it very much, and so did the Old Man. Only last night at the concert six young dandies stood around me, all in tail-coats and kid-gloves, and I stood among them in an ordinary coat and without gloves. The fellows made remarks all evening about me and my bristling upper lip. The best of it is that three months ago nobody knew me here and now all the world does, just because of the moustache! Oh, the philistines!
 * Letter to his sister, Marie (February 18, 1841)

 * 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.
 * Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith (1847)

 * For the first time in the revolutionary movement of 1848, for the first time since 1793, a nation surrounded by superior forces dares to counter the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury by revolutionary passion, the terreur blanche by the terreur rouge. For the first time after a long period we meet with a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person — Lajos Kossuth.
 * The Magyar Struggle in  (13 January 1849).

 * There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples (Völkerruinen), the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples () always become fanatical s of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution.
 * The Magyar Struggle in  (13 January 1849).

 * How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis? The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these nations, large and small. All the earlier  up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality — the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. (Weltsturm). For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary.
 * The Magyar Struggle in  (13 January 1849).

 * The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav  and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of  classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
 * The Magyar Struggle in  (13 January 1849)
 * Referring to the, in which Serbs from Vojvodina fought against the previously victorious Hungarian revolution.
 * It is clear even from the English press that Girardin doesn't support Cavaignac. But the very fact that he remarked on the brightness of Cavaignac's prospects is enough to characterise the situation. You mentioned the possibility that the majority [in the Legislative Assembly] might conclude an agreement with Bonaparte and endeavour to carry out an illegal revision; if they do so, I think it will go awry. They'll never succeed so long as it's opposed by Thiers, Changarnier and the Débats and their respective adherents. It would be too fine an opportunity for Cavaignac; and in that case he could, I believe, count on the army. If there's a fracas next year, Germany will be in the devil of a position. France, Italy and Poland all have an interest in her dismemberment. As you'll have seen, Mazzini has even promised the Czechs rehabilitation. Apart from Hungary, Germany would have only one possible ally, Russia — provided that a peasants' revolution had taken place there. Otherwise we shall have a guerre à mort with our noble friends from all points of the compass, and it's very questionable how the business will end.
 * Letter to Karl Marx (23 May 1851)

 * The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me that the Poles are une nation foutue [a finished nation] who can only continue to serve a purpose until such time as Russia herself becomes caught up into the agrarian revolution. From that moment Poland will have absolutely no raison d'étre any more. The Poles' sole contribution to history has been to indulge in foolish pranks at once valiant and provocative. Nor can a single moment be cited when Poland, even if only by comparison with Russia, has successfully represented progress or done anything of historical significance.
 * Letter to Karl Marx (23 May 1851)

 * Conclusion: To take as much as possible away from the Poles in the West, to man their fortresses, especially Posen, with Germans on the pretext of defence, to let them stew in their own juice, send them into battle, gobble bare their land, fob them off with promises of Riga and Odessa and, should it be possible to get the Russians moving, to ally oneself with the latter and compel the Poles to give way. Every inch of the frontier between Memel and Cracow we cede to the Poles will, militarily speaking, be utterly ruinous to this already wretchedly weak frontier, and will leave exposed the whole of the Baltic coast as far as Stettin. Besides, I am convinced that, come the next fracas, the entire Polish insurrection will be confined to Poseners and Galician nobility together with a few who have come over from the Kingdom, this having been bled so white that it's capable of nothing more, and that the pretensions of these knights, unless supported by French, Italians and Scandinavians, etc., and bolstered up by rumpuses on the part of the Czechs, will founder on the wretchedness of their performance. A nation which can muster 20,000 to 30,000 men at most, is not entitled to a voice. And Poland certainly could not muster very much more.
 * Letter to Karl Marx (23 May 1851)

 * Lassalle. It would be a pity about the fellow because of his great ability, but these goings-on are really too bad. He was always a man one had to keep a devilish sharp eye on and as a real Jew from the Slav border was always to exploit anyone for his own private ends on party pretexts. And then his urge to push his way into polite society, de parvenir, if only for appearance's sake, to disguise the greasy Breslau Jew with all kinds of pomade and paint was always repulsive.
 * Letter to Karl Marx (7 March 1856), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856–59 (2010), p. 27

 * What do you say to the elections in the factory districts? Once again the proletariat has discredited itself terribly... [I]t cannot be denied that the increase of working-class voters has brought the Tories more than their mere additional percentage and has improved their relative position.
 * Letter to Karl Marx (18 November 1868), quoted in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Correspondence, 1846–1895 (1942), pp. 253-254

 * 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.
 * Letter to Karl Marx (9 December 1869)

 * La Terreur, das sind großenteils nutzlose Grausamkeiten, begangen von Leuten, die selbst Angst haben, zu ihrer Selbstberuhigung.
 * Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves.
 * Letter to Marx (4 September 1870)

 * Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.
 *  (1876)

 * 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.
 * Anti-Dühring (1878)

 * 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.
 * Anti-Dühring (1878)

 * Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity.
 * Anti-Dühring, pt. 1, ch. 11 (1878)

 * The state is not “abolished,” it withers away.
 * Anti-Dühring, pt. 3, ch. 2 (1878)

 * The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. 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 in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the.
 * Letter to Philipp Van Patten (18 April 1883)

 * We are now approaching a, in which the old economic foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose through the concentration of considerable wealth in one hand — a man's hand — and from the endeavor to bequeath this wealth to the children of this man to the exclusion of all others. This necessitated monogamy on the woman's, but not on the man's part. Hence this monogamy of women in no way hindered open or secret polygamy of men. Now, the impending social revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and inheritable wealth—the means of production—into social property. Since monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it disappear when these causes are abolished? One might reply, not without reason: not only will it not disappear, but it will rather be perfectly realized. For with the transformation of the means of production into collective property, wagelabor will also disappear, and with it the proletariat and the necessity for a certain, statistically ascertainable number of women to surrender for money. Prostitution disappears and monogamy, instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a reality—for men also. At all events, the situation will be very much changed for men. But also that of women, and of all women, will be considerably altered. With the transformation of the means of production into collective property the monogamous family ceases to be the of society. The private household changes to a social industry. The care and education of children become? a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the "consequences" which now forms the essential social factor—moral and economic—hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man. Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more unconventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame? And finally, did we not see that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution, though antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the same social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at the same time monogamy?
 *  (1884) as translated by (1902); Full English text of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State - Full original-language German text of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

 * With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single scurvy individual–here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements.
 *  (1884) as translated by (1902); Full English text of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State - Full original-language German text of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

 * It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.
 * Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886)

 * My dear Laura. My congratulations to Paul le candidat du Jardin des Plantes—et des animaux. Being, in his quality as a nigger, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district. Let us hope the animaux will have the best of it in this struggle against the bêtes.—I am rather surprised at Basly's holding back, but if a set of men succeeds in being excluded from the press altogether, what can they expect? From Mesa's letter in the Spanish Socialista I See that the Blanquists too are making volte-face and approaching the Possibilists—another bad sign. A little success—even relative—at the elections would therefore be very welcome when our people are under such a momentary cloud. I know very well that that cloud will pass, that Parisian party life is a continual change of ups and downs, but at the same time I cannot but wish that next time they will cherish their own little weekly paper a little more than those disreputable dailies to which they work hard to give a reputation in order to be kicked out as soon as they have succeeded.
 * Letter to after her husband and Karl Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, stood for election as a candidate in a Paris district that contained a zoo (26 April 1887), quoted in Friedrich Engels, Correspondence, 1887–1890 (1959), p. 37

 * 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.
 * , footnote (1888 edition)

 * Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late ’seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist.
 * Letter to (August 5, 1890)

 * What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.
 * Letter to (September 21, 1890)

 * People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in and swear by the . 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.
 * Introduction to 1891 edition of Karl Marx's, The Civil War in France

 * The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this 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.
 * Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (1901)

 * History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time [1848] was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production.
 * Introduction (1895) to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50)

 * The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries," the "rebels"—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité notes tue, legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.
 * Introduction (1895) to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50), p. 27

Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844)
Published in the first and only issue of the , January 1844 Full text in English Full text in German

 * Die Nationalökonomie entstand als eine natürliche Folge der Ausdehnung des Handels, und mit ihr trat an die Stelle des einfachen, unwissenschaftlichen Schachers ein ausgebildetes System des erlaubten Betrugs, eine komplette Bereicherungswissenschaft.
 * Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.

 * Diese aus dem gegenseitigen Neid und der Habgier der Kaufleute entstandene Nationalökonomie oder Bereicherungswissenschaft trägt das Gepräge der ekelhaftesten Selbstsucht auf der Stirne.
 * This political economy or science of enrichment born of the merchants' mutual envy and greed, bears on its brow the mark of the most detestable selfishness.

 * Das Merkantilsystem hatte noch eine gewisse unbefangene, katholische Geradheit und verdeckte das unsittliche Wesen des Handels nicht im mindesten. ... Als aber der ökonomische Luther, Adam Smith, die bisherige Ökonomie kritisierte, hatten sich die Sachen sehr geändert. ... An die Stelle der katholischen Geradheit trat protestantische Gleisnerei.
 * The Mercantile System still had a certain artless Catholic candour and did not in the least conceal the immoral nature of trade. ... But when the economic Luther, Adam Smith, criticised past economics things had changed considerably. ... Protestant hypocrisy took the place of Catholic candour.

 * Natürlich ist es im Interesse des Handelnden, mit dem einen, von welchem er wohlfeil kauft, wie mit dem andern, an welchen er teuer verkauft, sich in gutem Vernehmen zu halten. Es ist also sehr unklug von einer Nation gehandelt, wenn sie bei ihren Versorgern und Kunden eine feindselige Stimmung nährt. Je freundschaftlicher, desto vorteilhafter. Dies ist die Humanität des Handels, und diese gleisnerische Art, die Sittlichkeit zu unsittlichen Zwecken zu mißbrauchen, ist der Stolz des Systems der Handelsfreiheit.
 * Naturally, it is in the interest of the trader to be on good terms with the one from whom he buys cheap as well as with the other to whom he sells dear. A nation therefore acts very imprudently if it fosters feelings of animosity in its suppliers and customers. The more friendly, the more advantageous. Such is the humanity of trade. And this hypocritical way of misusing morality for immoral purposes is the pride of the free-trade system.

 * Ihr habt die kleinen Monopole vernichtet, um das EINE große Grundmonopol, das Eigentum, desto freier und schrankenloser wirken zu lassen; ihr habt die Enden der Erde zivilisiert, um neues Terrain für die Entfaltung eurer niedrigen Habsucht zu gewinnen, ihr habt die Völker verbrüdert, aber zu einer Brüderschaft von Dieben.
 * You have destroyed the small monopolies so that the one great basic monopoly, property, may function the more freely and unrestrictedly. You have civilised the ends of the earth to win new terrain for the deployment of your vile avarice. You have brought about the fraternisation of the peoples – but the fraternity is the fraternity of thieves.

 * Ihr habt ... die Kriege vermindert, um im Frieden desto mehr zu verdienen, um die Feindschaft der einzelnen, den ehrlosen Krieg der Konkurrenz, auf die höchste Spitze zu treiben! - Wo habt ihr etwas aus reiner Humanität, aus dem Bewußtsein der Nichtigkeit des Gegensatzes zwischen dem allgemeinen und individuellen Interesse getan? Wo seid ihr sittlich gewesen, ohne interessiert zu sein, ohne unsittliche, egoistische Motive im Hintergrund zu hegen?
 * You have reduced the number of wars – to earn all the bigger profits in peace, to intensify to the utmost the enmity between individuals, the ignominious war of competition! When have you done anything out of pure humanity, from consciousness of the futility of the opposition between the general and the individual interest? When have you been moral without being interested, without harbouring at the back of your mind immoral, egoistical motives?

 * Nachdem die liberale Ökonomie ihr Bestes getan hatte, um durch die Auflösung der Nationalitäten die Feindschaft zu verallgemeinern, die Menschheit in eine Horde reißender Tiere - und was sind Konkurrenten anders? - zu verwandeln, die einander ebendeshalb auffressen, WEIL jeder mit allen andern gleiches Interesse hat, nach dieser Vorarbeit blieb ihr nur noch ein Schritt zum Ziele übrig, die Auflösung der Familie. Um diese durchzusetzen, kam ihr eine eigene schöne Erfindung, das Fabriksystem, zu Hülfe.
 * By dissolving nationalities, the liberal economic system had done its best to universalise enmity, to transform mankind into a horde of ravenous beasts (for what else are competitors?) who devour one another just because each has identical interests with all the others – after this preparatory[work there remained but one step to take before the goal was reached, the dissolution of the family. To accomplish this, economy's own beautiful invention, the, came to its aid.

 * Die Nachfrage des Ökonomen ist nicht die wirkliche Nachfrage, seine Konsumtion ist eine künstliche. Dem Ökonomen ist nur der ein wirklich Fragender, ein wirklicher Konsument, der für das, was er empfängt, ein Äquivalent zu bieten hat.
 * The economist's “demand” is not the real demand; his “consumption” is an artificial consumption. For the economist, only that person really demands, only that person is a real consumer, who has an equivalent to offer for what he receives.

(1845)

 * German title: Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England
 * Page numbers refer to 1987 Penguin edition

 * I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life—many an hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because thus I got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of every one but an English money-monger.
 * p. 27

 * The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death.
 * p. 112

 * The bourgeoisie ... lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!
 * p. 112

 * Der ganze Unterschied gegen die alte, offenherzige Sklaverei ist nur der, dass der heutige Arbeiter frei zu sein scheint, weil er nicht auf einmal verkauft wird, sondern stückweise, pro Tag, pro Woche, pro Jahr, und weil nicht ein Eigenthümer ihn dem andern verkauft, sondern er sich selbst auf diese Weise verkaufen muss, da er ja nicht der Sklave eines Einzelnen, sondern der ganzen besitzenden Klasse ist.
 * The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class.
 * pp. 114-115

 * I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.
 * p. 275

 * 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.

 * How is it possible that the poorer classes can remain healthy and have a reasonable expectation of life under such conditions? What can one expect but that they should suffer from continual outbreaks of epidemics and an excessively low expectation of life?  The physical condition of the workers shows a progressive deterioration.

 * The bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen."

 * True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law.

(1847)

 * Full text in English

 * Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

 * The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition.

 * There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today.

 * The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers.

 * The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

 * The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.

 * Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.

 * The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.

 * The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.

 * 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.

 * The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. ... The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.

 * The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation. The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.

 * Big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries. It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class.

 * Wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto ruling classes, the aristocracy, the, and their representative, the . The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the entailment of estates – in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition – that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.

 * The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.

 * Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of . In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.

 * Everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be employed only by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows that the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital. Simultaneously, this process draws members of the bourgeoisie and proletarians together into the great cities where industry can be carried on most profitably, and by thus throwing great masses in one spot it gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their own strength. Moreover, the further this process advances, the more new labor-saving machines are invented, the greater is the pressure exercised by big industry on wages, which, as we have seen, sink to their minimum and therewith render the condition of the proletariat increasingly unbearable. The growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its rising power to prepare a proletarian social revolution.

 * Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter.

 * It makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.

 * Big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom. It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions. We see with the greatest clarity: (i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and (ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether.

 * Abolish competition and replace it with association.

 * Since the by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the  of goods.

 * The abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.

 * Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations. Private property has not always existed. When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.

 * So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the and extending the forces of production – so long as this is not possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society's productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development.

 * The abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary. ... The outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

 * In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity. What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.

 * Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat.

 * Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country's productive forces.

 * When all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

 * By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.

 * It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.

 * What will be the consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property? Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished. There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past.

 * Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone. The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of private property and is held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will assure to society all the products it needs. In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members.

 * Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety.

 * Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.

 * The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.

 * What will be the influence of communist society on the family? It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.

 * Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it.

 * What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities? The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.

 * All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance.

 * Some propose mere welfare measures – while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

 * Democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists. It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.

 * Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it.

(1848)

 * From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say individuality vanishes.

Quotes attributed to Engels

 * Comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning.
 * Attributed by Karl Marx in Comments on the North American Events,  (12 October 1862)

Quotes about Engels

 * The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrie Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free."
 * Paula Gunn Allen The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986)

 * That the Materialistic Socialists will improve H. [History] for the poor. Their best writer, Engels, made known the errors and the horrors of our Factory System.
 * Lord Acton, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), pp. 181–82

 * Engels always considered himself a junior partner, and so, without doubt, he was. But that does not lessen his role. Had he not been the junior partner, much for which his senior partner is known would not have been done.
 * John Kenneth Galbraith, in , Chapter 3, p. 89

 * 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, The Junius Pamphlet (1915)

 * Engels's analysis has faced criticism in the twentieth century, both for its anthropological inaccuracy and for its theoretical confusion. Simone de Beauvoir found the materialist position inadequate to describe the nature of female subordination. "Historical materialism takes for granted facts that call for explanations.... It cannot provide solutions for the problems we have raised, because these concern the whole man and not that abstraction: Homo economicus." Simone de Beauvoir argued that woman's oppression is at bottom not based on economic factors, for "if the human consciousness had not included the original category of the Other and an original aspiration to dominate the Other, the invention of the bronze tool could not have caused the oppression of woman." More recently Ann Lane has attacked not materialism but Engels's inconsistency in applying it. She has argued that Engels mistakenly believed "that the responsibilities of home and family, and the economic ties that bind them together, are not an important part of what establishes their cohesion, that society can remove a vital function of an institution in order to perfect it. Socialist society will strip the family of most of its traditional jobs, but the family itself, in its pristine state, untouched by history or reality, shall remain."
 * Margaret S Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920 (1981)

 * Today in Korea—in Southeast Asia—in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East—in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage—what sacrifice—what determination never to rest until victory!...And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an “American Century” blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by—that we now live in a people’s century—that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics...One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future.
 * Paul Robeson, "To You Beloved Comrade" (April 1953)

 * You cannot conquer an awakened people. You cannot Prussianize Belgium and France. You cannot eradicate the teachings of Marx and Engels from the minds of hundreds of thousands of German Socialists. Surely they would find some way of uniting in spirit and in deed with the comrades of other nations in case of such an invasion on the part of a government which they had always understood and denounced.
 * Anna Strunsky, "The Revolutionist and War" (June 1915)

title: Friedrich Engels


text:
Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.

Quotes

 * One of the most important philosophical and social issues confronting humanity in the beginning of the 21st century is the sharing of information.
 * Statement from the Free Data License White Paper dealing with free and open content such as the GFDL and the Creative Commons license.

 * Creative Commons licensing is great because it just sort of “snaps in” — the hard thinking has already been done, and even some of the technical work.
 * From Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of flickr in

"Get Creative" Flash movie

 * "It can be that easy when you skip the intermediaries."
 * "Enter one of the internet's most famous citizens. A face familiar the world over. A public identity rivaled by only a handful of corporate giants and global superstars... the big copyright C."
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 * "We wrote these licenses so that lawyers and courts could read them. Then we translated them into a language that YOU can read."

''Further discussion and commentary as to what should be on this page is welcome on the Talk page.

title: Creative Commons


text:
User:Alan Liefting

Favourites

 * "Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, no longer wholly guided by instinct, not yet wholly guided by reason" - Theodore Dreiser, American author.

 * "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw.

 * "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." - Edward Abbey

 * "Hollywood has always been an irresistible, prefabricated metaphor for the crass, the materialistic, the shallow, and the craven." - Neal Gabler (this one needs adding somewhere.)

 * "If humans are to survive we must learn to live on the interest and not the capital of nature." - (Marie via email)

 * "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - Salvor Hardin (an Asimov character)

 * "Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them." - William E. Vaughan

 * "Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy." - Groucho Marx

 * "A hand on your cock is more moral - and more fun - than a finger on the trigger." - Lawrence Lipton

 * "In most traditions of logic repeating a statement until the other party vomits does not adduce truth value." ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:40, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

New Zealand

 * "Pity the thought, is this the price we pay, the price for progress, beauty all swept away?" (or suchlike) - William Pember Reeves

title: User:Alan Liefting


text:
Raymond Smullyan

Raymond Smullyan (May 25, 1919 – February 6, 2017) was an American philosopher, mathematician, logician and a magician.

Quotes

 * Why should I worry about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!
 * This Book Needs No Title (1986)

 * I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!
 * Is God a Taoist? (1977)

 * If it is really true that you cannot resist them, then you are not sinning of your own free will and hence (at least according to me) not sinning at all.
 * Is God a Taoist? (1977)

 * There is nothing like a naturalistic orientation to dispel all these morbid thoughts of "sin" and "free will" and "moral responsibility."
 * Is God a Taoist? (1977)

 * Medical opinions differed as to the cause of this "humor" disease.
 * Planet Without Laughter (1980)

 * From what little was known about the subject, insincerity itself was regarded as another form of psychosis but one which was exceedingly rare.
 * Planet Without Laughter (1980)

 * Humor could not flourish in a wholly serious and rational atmosphere.
 * Planet Without Laughter (1980)

 * Metaphysical problems about "mind" versus "matter" arise only from epistemological confusions.
 * An Epistemological Nightmare (1982)

 * Of course the falsity of the fact that you believe it is red implies that you don't believe it is red. But this does not mean that you believe it is not red!
 * An Epistemological Nightmare (1982)

 * I believe that either Jupiter has life or it doesn't. But I neither believe that it does, nor do I believe that it doesn't.
 * An Epistemological Nightmare (1982)

title: Raymond Smullyan


text:
User:CooYip~enwikiquote

email: cooyeah [at] hotmail [dot] com CooCooWakka: http://www.hsfz.net.cn/coo/wiki/

title: User:CooYip~enwikiquote


text:
Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron (born 4 March 1948) is an American teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist, most famous for her book The Artist's Way (1992).

Quotes

 * Art is an act of the soul, not of the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams — their visions, really — we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We invoke the Great Creator when we invoke our own creativity, and that creative force has the power to alter lives, fulfill destinies, and answer our dreams.
 * Inspirations : Meditations from The Artist's Way (2001), "Invocation"

The Artist's Way (1992)

 * The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity''

 * Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. And few ideas are worse than the ones we have about art.

 * Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction. We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.

 * I have learned, as a rule of thumb, never to ask whether you can do something. Say, instead, that you are doing it. Then fasten your seat belt. The most remarkable things follow.

 * Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself.

To the perfectionist, there is always room for improvement. The perfectionist call this humility. In reality, it is egotism. It is pride that makes us want to write a perfect script, paint a perfect painting, perform a perfect audition monologue. '''Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough — that we should try again. No. We should not.
 * The perfectionist is never satisfied. The perfectionist never says, "This is pretty good. I think I’ll just keep going."
 * In Inspirations : Meditations from The Artist's Way (2001), Cameron extends the above statement with further remarks: Focused on process, our creative life retains a sense of adventure. Focused on product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren. We inherit the obsession with product and the idea that art produces finished product from our consumer-oriented society. This focus creates a great deal of creative block.

 * What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.

 * Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite — getting something down.

 * Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.

 * Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.

 * All too often too often we try to push, pull, outline and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control. Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.

The Right to Write (1998)

 * The Right to Write : An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life (Tarcher, 1998; ISBN 1-58542-009-3

 * For most of us, the seductive and unstated part of "if I had enough time" is the unstated sentence "to hear myself think." In other words, we imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook— if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for what is trying to bubble up today.

Blessings (1998)

 * Blessings: Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (Tarcher, 1998; ISBN 0-87477-906-5

 * Life is a creative endeavor. It is active, not passive. We are the yeast that leavens our lives into rich, fully baked loaves. When we experience our lives as flat and lackluster, it is our consciousness that is at fault. We hold the inner key that turns our lives from thankless to fruitful. That key is "Blessing."

 * Focused on our good, focused on our abundance we naturally attract more of the same. This is spiritual law. Our consciousness is creative. What we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: Which do we want more of?

 * Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.

 * When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.

 * The growth of one blesses all. I am committed to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively.

 * Love is not love if it compelled by reason and driven by logic — love exists in spite of those things, not because of them. It is a emotion which needs no fuel to fire it or oxygen to feed it; if you have to look for the why, then stop looking; it was never there at all.

 * I honor my importance and the importance of others. None of us is dispensable, none of us is replacable. In the chorus of life each of us brings a True Note, a perfect pitch that adds to the harmony of the whole. I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing.

title: Julia Cameron


text:
Miguel Ángel Ruiz

Miguel Ángel Ruiz (born August 27, 1952), more famous as Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican shaman, teacher, and author, most famous for his work The Four Agreements.

Quotes

 * I change my story by changing what I believe about myself. When I clean up the lies I believe about myself, the lies I believe about other people change. Every time I change myself, my whole story changes to adapt to the new main character.
 * Facebook remarks (21 April 2011)

The Four Agreements (1997)

 * Be Impeccable with Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

 * Don't Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

 * Don't Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

 * Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

The Mastery of Love (1999)

 * You have the power to create. Your power is so strong that whatever you believe comes true. You create yourself, whatever you believe you are. You are the way you are because that is what you believe about yourself. Your whole reality, everything you believe, is your creation. You have the same power as any other human in the world. The main difference between you and someone else is how you apply your power, what you create with your power.
 * Ch.1 - p.8  [Page numbers per the 1999 Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. paperback]

 * In every relationship there are two halves of that relationship. One half is you, and the other half is your son, your daughter, your father, your mother, your friend, your partner. Of those halves, you are only responsible for your half; you are not responsible for the other half.
 * Ch.4 - p.66

 * Love is not about concepts; love is about action. The only way to master love is to practice love. You don't need to justify your love, you don't need to explain your love; you just need to practice your love.
 * Ch.4 - p.71
 * Relationship is an art. To keep the two of you happy, you have to keep your half perfect. You are responsible for your half, and your half has a certain amount of garbage. Your garbage is your garbage. The one who has to deal with that garbage is you, not your partner. And it's the same with your partner's half. Your partner has a certain amount of garbage. Knowing your partner has garbage, you allow her to deal with her own garbage. You are going to love her and accept her with all of her garbage. You are going to respect her garbage. You are not in a relationship to clean your partner's garbage; she is going to clean her own. Even if your partner asks for your help, you have the choice to say no. Saying no doesn't mean you don't love or accept your partner; it means you are not able or you don't want to play that game.
 * Ch.5 - p.85-86

 * There are people who say, "I want to change, I really want to change. There is no reason for me to be so poor. I am intelligent. I deserve to live a good life, to earn much more money than I earn." They know this, but that is what their mind is telling them. What do these people do? They go and turn the television on and spend hours and hours watching it. Then how strong is their will? Once we have awareness, we have a choice. If we could have that awareness all the time, we could change our routines, change our reactions, and change our entire life. Once we have the awareness, we recover free will. Becoming aware is about being responsible for your own life. You are not responsible for what is happening in the world. You are responsible for yourself.
 * Ch.7 - p.110-111

The Voice of Knowledge (2004)

 * If I see a tree, I don't just see the tree; I qualify the tree, I describe the tree, I have an opinion about the tree. I like the tree or I don't like the tree. I may feel that the tree is beautiful or not, but my point of view, my opinion about the tree, is a story of my own creation. Once I interpret, qualify, or judge what I perceive, it is no longer real; it is a virtual world. This is what the Toltec call dreaming. The Toltec believe that humans are living in a dream. You are dreaming your life in this moment. You live in the story that you create, and I live in the story that I create. Your story is your reality — a virtual reality that is only true for you, the one who creates it. Long ago, somebody said, "Every head is a world," and it's true. You live in your own world, and that world is so private. Nobody knows what you have in your world. Only you know, and sometimes even you don't know.
 * Ch.4,  'A night in the desert'  - p.49, 51 [Page numbers per the 2004 Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. paperback edition (Don Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills)]

 * If one hundred people perceive the same event, you hear one hundred different stories, and everybody claims that his or her story is the true story. Of course, it's only true for that person, and your story is only true for you. What we share with one another is just our perception; it is just our point of view. And it's completely normal because the only thing we have is our point of view. You know, the way we create our stories is very interesting. We have a tendency to distort everything we perceive to make it agree with what we already believe; we "fix it" to make it agree with our lies. It is amazing how we do this. With awareness, we recover the control of our story. That is the good news. If we don't like our story, we are the authors; we can change it.
 * Ch.5,  'The storyteller'  - p.70-71, 71, 72, 77.

 * You don't need internal dialogue; you can know without thinking. The value of cultivating a silent mind has been known for thousands of years. In India, people use meditation and the chanting of mantras to stop the internal dialogue. To have peace in your head is incredible. The moment the noise stops, you notice the silence and feel the relief, "Ahhh..." When the voice in your head finally stops talking, it feels something like that. I call it inner peace.
 * Ch.6,  'Inner peace'  - p.89

 * Common sense is wisdom, and wisdom is different from knowledge. You are wise when you no longer act against yourself. You are wise when you live in harmony with yourself, with your own kind, with all of creation.
 * Ch.8,  'Common sense and blind faith'  - p.138
 * To be aware is to see what is truth, to see everything the way it is, not the way we want it to be to justify what we already believe. The mastery of awareness is the first mastery of the Toltec, and we can also call it the mastery of truth. First you need to be aware that the voice in your head is always telling you a story. You are dreaming all the time. It is true that you perceive, but the way the storyteller justifies, explains, and makes assumptions about what you perceive is not the truth; it's just a story. Next, you need to have the awareness that the voice of the storyteller in your head is not necessarily your voice. Finally, you need to practice awareness until you master awareness. When you master awareness as a habit, you always see life the way it is, not the way you want to see it.
 * Ch.9,  'Transforming the storyteller'  - p.153, 154

 * Doing your best is about trusting in yourself and trusting in creation, the force of life. You set a goal and go for it 100 percent without any attachment to attaining it. I encourage you to take responsibility for every decision you make in life. If you practice doing your best, very soon it becomes a habit. When doing your best becomes a habit, everything is a set up for you to always be happy.
 * Ch.9,  'Transforming the storyteller'  - p.157, 158

The Fifth Agreement (2010)

 * The Fifth Agreement : A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery

 * Be Skeptical, but Learn to Listen.

 * Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

title: Miguel Ángel Ruiz


text:
Talk:Creative Commons

One of the most important philosophical and social issues confronting humanity in the beginning of the 21st century is the sharing of information. Western society grasps two polar opposites of opinion in regard to copyright law. One side insists upon a copyright regime in which every last use of a work is highly regulated and all rights of a particular work are reserved. The other side rejects the need for any rights of the creator allowing for a huge amount of latitude for artists but at the same time leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

Creative Commons is working towards a happy medium. They are devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share. If a copyright license means that all rights are reserved and the public domain is a space where intellectual property protection does not apply then a creative commons license means that some rights are reserved while others are given up.

--137.186.187.254 21:47, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * The above was the initial content of the Article page, and though it might present admirable ideas, it does not appear to be a quotation, so much as a direct expression of praise, and I am thus moving most of it here, unless someone can indicate otherwise. Part of it seems to be a quote, and that I will leave. The entire page presents a bit of a problem though... Should it be one of quotations from or about the Creative Commons licenses, or about the Creative Commons organization? — Kalki 05:10, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Creative Commons


text:
Ken Kay

Ken Kay is the CEO of EdLeader21.

Quotes

 * "In the same way that the Soviets' Sputnik satellite woke up the country to the need for math and science education, the outsourcing conversation cries out for a constructive, long-term solution that ensures Americans have world-class education, a world-class workforce and the ability to remain a competitive global leader." (2004)
 * "High Tech, Strangled By the Beltway", The Washington Post, 13 March 2004
 * Note: The context of this quote was an article on the offshoring of American labor.

title: Ken Kay