Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrengten Kreatur, das Gemuth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustende ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volkes.
Philosophers
Karl Marx
Born in 1818 in Trier, Prussia, Karl Marx inverted Hegelian dialectics into materialism and constructed historical materialism, locating the driving force of history in economic relations of production. With Engels he authored The Communist Manifesto, presenting the theory of class struggle, and in his life's work Das Kapital he dissected the structural contradictions of capitalism through the concept of surplus value. His analytical methods transformed the methodology of social science as a whole.
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Karl Marx's Other Quotes
Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Workers of all lands, unite!
Being determines consciousness.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Related Quotes
God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.
-- Sigmund Freud
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
-- Erich Fromm