I am nothing but I must be everything.
Karl MarxRead
It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Marx critiques the impact of capitalist trade on human values and freedoms.
In this quote, Karl Marx expresses his belief that capitalism has corrupted the essence of human experiences and emotions, replacing them with cold calculations of profit and loss. He argues that it has stripped away genuine freedoms and instead imposed a singular form of exploitation disguised under the guise of free trade, highlighting the brutal reality of capitalist structures that prioritize economic gain over human dignity and worth.
Themes
CapitalismExploitationFreedomReligionTradeHuman Worth
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about economic systems.
More from Karl Marx
All quotes →Religion is the opiate of the people.
Karl MarxRead
It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.
Karl MarxRead
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
Karl MarxRead
To be radical is to grasp things by the root.
Karl MarxRead
Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.
Karl MarxRead
Similar quotes
One is not righteous who does much, but the one who, without work, believes much in Christ. The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this,' and everything is already done.
Martin LutherRead
Nothing seems to me to be rarer today then genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that this plant finds the mild atmosphere of our culture unendurable. Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief one already has.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.
Victor HugoRead
And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?
Orson Scott CardRead
When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god-not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her.
E. M. ForsterRead
The cautious faith that never saws off a limb on which it is sitting, never learns that unattached limbs may find strange unaccountable ways of not falling.
Dallas WillardRead