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Politics90 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883Man is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle · 350 BCNo tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCAmbition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787All 90 quotes →Political theory84 quotes
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCAmbition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776All 84 quotes →Freedom31 quotes
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — Declaration of Independence · 1776Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762The basis of a democratic state is liberty. — Aristotle · 350 BCThose who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for...is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free. — John Stuart Mill · 1862Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently. — Rosa Luxemburg · 1919All 31 quotes →Democracy18 quotes
The basis of a democratic state is liberty. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhat we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man's ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy. — Francis Fukuyama · 1989Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.... Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. — Herbert Marcuse · 1964For if liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. — Aristotle · 350 BCAll 18 quotes →Government18 quotes
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788The State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531All 18 quotes →Human nature17 quotes
Man is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle · 350 BCMan is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. — Albert Camus · 1951Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531So long as the great majority of men are not deprived of either property or honour, they are satisfied. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532All 17 quotes →Revolution15 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhat is a rebel? A man who says no. — Albert Camus · 1951A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation. — Edmund Burke · 1790A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture... A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. — Mao Zedong · 1927Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions. — Edmund Burke · 1790All 15 quotes →American politics14 quotes
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. — Declaration of Independence · 1776We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare; and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. — Constitution of the United States · 1787The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787The American continents... Are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. — James Monroe · 1823Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? — James Madison · 1787The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. — James Madison · 1788All 14 quotes →America11 quotes
America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without. — Walt Whitman · 1871Religious insanity is very common in the United States. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. — Thomas Paine · 1776The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men, and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835All 11 quotes →Property rights10 quotes
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1755The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. — Karl Marx · 1848I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men, and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. — John Locke · 1690Property is theft. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon · 1840The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. — James Madison · 1787All 10 quotes →Checks and balances8 quotes
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. — James Madison · 1788The defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. — James Madison · 1788An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. — James Madison · 1788In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. — James Madison · 1788All 8 quotes →Freedom of speech and expression8 quotes
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — James Madison · 1789We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. — John Stuart Mill · 1859An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer. — John Stuart Mill · 1859If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. — John Stuart Mill · 1859The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing. — John Adams · 1765The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. — John Stuart Mill · 1859All 8 quotes →Law8 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. — Aristotle · 350 BCThere are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963Laws, like houses, lean on one another. — Edmund Burke · 1760Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in. — William Shenstone · 1764All 8 quotes →Legal theory8 quotes
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. — Aristotle · 350 BCThere are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them. — George Orwell · 1945Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work. — John Milton · 1644All 8 quotes →Tyranny8 quotes
No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhere some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhere-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. — James Madison · 1788A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787All 8 quotes →History7 quotes
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. — Karl Marx · 1852Who built the Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?...
Where, the evening that the wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? — Bertolt Brecht · 1936At every step the natural light which illuminates their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, or finding novelty even in its errors. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. — Edmund Burke · 1790History is a relay of revolutions. — Saul Alinsky · 1971All 7 quotes →Natural law7 quotes
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — Declaration of Independence · 1776The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. — Alexander Hamilton · 1775The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. — Thomas Jefferson · 1774Man...has by nature a power...to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate—against the injuries and attempts of other men. — John Locke · 1690Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense,—nonsense upon stilts. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. — George Mason · 1776All 7 quotes →Oppression of women7 quotes
So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. — John Stuart Mill · 1869The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement. — John Stuart Mill · 1869It is humbling to reflect, that in those countries in which the fondness for the mere persons of women is carried to the highest excess, they are slaves; and that their moral and intellectual degradation increases in direct proportion to the adoration which is paid to mere external charms. — Hannah More · 1799The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave. — James Connolly · 1915The generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal. — John Stuart Mill · 1869It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created rather to feel than reason. — Mary Wollstonecraft · 1792All 7 quotes →Political faction7 quotes
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. — James Madison · 1787By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. — James Madison · 1787The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. — James Madison · 1787The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. — James Madison · 1787Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. — James Madison · 1788The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. — James Madison · 1787All 7 quotes →Rule of law7 quotes
To no man will we sell, or deny, or delay, right or justice. — Magna Carta · 1215Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690But where says some is the king of America?...In America the law is king. — Thomas Paine · 1776To abolish the fences of laws between men—as tyranny does—means to take away man's liberties and destroy freedom as a living political reality; for the space between men as it is hedged in by laws, is the living space of freedom. — Hannah Arendt · 1951No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor. — Theodore Roosevelt · 1903He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. — Thomas Paine · 1795All 7 quotes →American Revolution6 quotes
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. — Thomas Paine · 1776These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial and article as Freedom should not be highly rated. — Thomas Paine · 1776That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved. — Declaration of Independence · 1776And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. — Declaration of Independence · 1776It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same. — Thomas Paine · 1777It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged. — Thomas Paine · 1778Capitalism6 quotes
Laissez faire does not mean: Let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: Let each individual choose how he wants to cooperate in the social division of labor; let the consumers determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. Planning means: Let the government alone choose and enforce its rulings by the apparatus of coercion and compulsion. — Ludwig von Mises · 1949All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. — Karl Marx · 1848Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave. — James Connolly · 1915Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. — Vladimir Lenin · 1917Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them…"If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire." — Friedrich Engels · 1845Conservatism6 quotes
Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. — Roger Scruton · 2014The Conservatives…being by the law of their existence the stupidest party. — John Stuart Mill · 1861The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. — Hannah Arendt · 1970A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. — Gerald Ford · 1960How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century. — Aneurin Bevan · 1952To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. — Michael Oakeshott · 1962Equality6 quotes
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — Declaration of Independence · 1776What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all-the realization at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth. — William Morris · 1894For if liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. — Aristotle · 350 BCThe true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one. — John Stuart Mill · 1869While classes exist no one is free.
We are not born to be slaves or to be masters.
We are born to be brothers and sisters.
What is capitalism but buying and selling of people? — Ernesto Cardenal · 1972Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever. — Joseph Priestley · 1768Human rights6 quotes
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — Declaration of Independence · 1776Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. — Edmund Burke · 1790The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. — Thomas Jefferson · 1774Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense,—nonsense upon stilts. — Jeremy Bentham · 1832Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatever. — Joseph Priestley · 1768Surely of all 'rights of man,' this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest. — Thomas Carlyle · 1840Oppression6 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate. — Lydia Maria Child · 1833You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power-he's free again. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1968Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them…"If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire." — Friedrich Engels · 1845All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. — Henry David Thoreau · 1848Power6 quotes
Riches, knowledge and honour are but several sorts of power. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. — James Madison · 1788Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. — Oscar Wilde · 1891To have power means not to have to give in, and to force the environment or the other person to do so. Power in this narrow sense is the priority of output over intake, the ability to talk instead of listen. In a sense, it is the ability to afford not to learn. — Karl Deutsch · 1966Whoever is responsible for another's becoming powerful ruins himself. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1513Class conflict5 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. — Karl Marx · 1848In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end. — Karl Marx · 1848While classes exist no one is free.
We are not born to be slaves or to be masters.
We are born to be brothers and sisters.
What is capitalism but buying and selling of people? — Ernesto Cardenal · 1972Communism5 quotes
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. — Karl Marx · 1848The State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. — Karl Marx · 1848We aim at something more sublime and more equitable-the common good, or the community of goods... We demand, we would have, the communal enjoyment of the fruits which are for everyone. — Sylvain Marechal · 1796Constitutional theory5 quotes
Within these limits, the power vested in American courts of justice, of pronouncing a statute to be unconstitutional, forms one of the most powerful barriers that has ever been devised against the tyranny of political assemblies. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. — James Madison · 1788In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. — James Madison · 1788We must bear in mind that we are not to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote futurity. Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788Bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788