Sourced and curated.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 9.8

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 9.6

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

1883

★ 9.3

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.7

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.2

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

Twilight of the Idols · 1889

★ 7.7

"Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers!"

The Gay Science · 1882

★ 7.6

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Beyond Good and Evil · 1886

★ 7.5

Life always gets harder toward the summit-the cold increases, responsibility increases.

The Antichrist · 1895

★ 7.4

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world…it is the opium of the people.

Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right · 1883

★ 7.3

This is hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra · 1883

★ 7.3

What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face.

Hegel 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.

The Gay Science · 1882

★ 7.3

Essay · Historical literature · Political literature

One lives but once in this world.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte · 1852

★ 7.1

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Clavigo · 1774

★ 7.1

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Philosophical literature · Historical literature

Theses on Feurbach · 1845

★ 7.1

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Philosophy of History · 1832

★ 7.1

Treatise · Philosophical literature

The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom.

Friedrich Schiller

1794

★ 7.0

Newspaper

Politics is the art of the possible.

Otto von Bismarck

1867

★ 7.0

Political literature · Philosophical literature

The State is not "abolished", it withers away.

Friedrich Engels

Anti-Duhring · 1878

★ 7.0

Newspaper

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Henry Kissinger

1971

★ 7.0

Play · Tragic play

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

Heinrich Heine

1821

★ 6.9

The revolution is like Saturn-it eats its children.

Georg Buchner

Danton's Death · 1835

★ 6.9

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that Fate and character are the same conception.

Novalis

1802

★ 6.9

The man of talent is like the marksman who hits a mark the others cannot hit; the man of genius is like the marksman who hits a mark they cannot even see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Idea · 1819

★ 6.9

Novel

Beauty can pierce one like a pain.

Thomas Mann

Buddenbrooks · 1901

★ 6.9

Love you will find only where you may show yourself weak without provoking strength.

Theodor Adorno

Minima Moralia · 1951

★ 6.9

Essay

It was not the power of the Spaniards that destroyed the Aztec Empire but the disbelief of the Aztecs in themselves.

E.F. Schumacher

1962

★ 6.9

Political literature

War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.

Karl Von Clausewitz

On War · 1833

★ 6.8

Poem · Political literature

Who 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

Questions from a Worker Who Reads · 1936

★ 6.8

In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.

Beyond Good and Evil · 1886

★ 6.5

There was really only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

The Antichrist · 1895

★ 6.5

If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people's backs and heads!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra · 1883

★ 6.4

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra · 1883

★ 6.4

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

Beyond Good and Evil · 1886

★ 6.4

Martin Luther

1569

★ 6.3

Play

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Iphigenia in Tauris · 1787

★ 6.3

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1819

★ 6.3

Philosophical literature · Historical literature

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Philosophy of History · 1832

★ 6.3

Essay · Historical literature · Political literature

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.