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Each Pursues His Private Interest And Only His Private Interest; And Thereby Serves The Private Interests Of All, The General Interest, Without Willing It Or Knowing It. The Real Point Is Not That Each Individual's Pursuit Of His Private Interest Promotes The Totality Of Private Interests, The General Interest. One Could Just As Well Deduce From This Abstract Phrase That Each Individual Reciprocally Blocks The Assertion Of The Others' Interests, So That, Instead Of A General Affirmation, This War Of All Against All Produces A General Negation.

-Karl Marx

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Each Pursues His Private

Karl Marx

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Each Pursues His Private Interest And Only His Private Interest; And Thereby Serves The Private Interests Of All, The General Interest, Without Willing It Or Knowing It. The Real Point Is Not That Each Individual's Pursuit Of His Private Interest Promotes The Totality Of Private Interests, The General Interest. One Could Just As Well Deduce From This Abstract Phrase That Each Individual Reciprocally Blocks The Assertion Of The Others' Interests, So That, Instead Of A General Affirmation, This War Of All Against All Produces A General Negation.

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The Communists Have No Need To Introduce Free Love; It Has Existed Almost From Time Immemorial.

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We Know Only A Single Science, The Science Of History. History Can Be Contemplated From Two Sides, It Can Be Divided Into The History Of Nature And The History Of Mankind. However, The Two Sides Are Not To Be Divided Off; As Long As Men Exist The History Of Nature And The History Of Men Are Mutually Conditioned.

Bourgeois Society Ought Long Ago To Have Gone To The Dogs Through Sheer Idleness; For Those Of Its Members Who Work, Acquire Nothing, And Those Who Acquire Anything, Do Not Work.

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I Do Not Like Money, Money Is The Reason We Fight.

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.

I Am A Machine, Condemned To Devour Them And Then, Throw Them, In A Changed Form, On The Dunghill Of History.

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...the First Step In The Revolution By The Working Class, Is To Raise The Proletariat To The Position Of Ruling Class, To Win The Battle For Democracy.

...it Happens That Society Is Saved As Often As The Circle Of Its Ruling Class Is Narrowed, As Often As A More Exclusive Interest Asserts Itself Over The General. Every Demand For The Most Simple Bourgeois Financial Reform, For The Most Ordinary Liberalism, For The Most Commonplace Republicanism, For The Flattest Democracy Is Forthwith Punished As An Assault Upon Society And Is Branded As Socialism.

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I Am Greatly Pleased With The Public, Authentic Isolation In Which We Two, You And I, Now Find Ourselves. It Is Wholly In Accord With Our Attitude And Our Principles.

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The Criticism Of Religion Is The Beginning Of All Criticism

Criticism Of Religion

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Science And Democracy Are The Right And Left Hands Of What I'll Refer To As The Move From The Realm Of Necessity To The Realm Of Freedom.

Price, Taken By Itself, Is Nothing But The Monetary Expression Of Value.

Society Is Undergoing A Silent Revolution, Which Must Be Submitted To, And Which Takes No More Notice Of The Human Existences It Breaks Down Than An Earthquake Regards The Houses It Subverts. The Classes And The Races, Too Weak To Master The New Conditions Of Life, Must Give Way.

Scientific Truth Is Always Paradox, If Judged By Everyday Experience, Which Catches Only The Delusive Appearance Of Things.

A Heavy Progressive Or Graduated Income Tax.

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The Religious World Is But A Reflex Of The Real World.

Religion Is Only The Illusory Sun Which Revolves Round Man As Long As He Does Not Revolve Round Himself.

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Nothing To Lose

A Nation That Enslaves Another Forges Its Own Chains.

By Means Of The Banking System The Distribution Of Capital As A Special Business, A Social Function, Is Taken Out Of The Hands Of The Private Capitalists And Usurers. But At The Same Time, Banking And Credit Become The Most Effective Means Of Driving Captialist Production Beyond Its Own Limits And One Of The Most Effective Vehicles Of Crises And Swindle.

Taxes Are The Source Of Life For The Bureaucracy, The Army And The Court, In Short, For The Whole Apparatus Of The Executive Power. Strong Government And Heavy Taxes Are Identical.

The Entire So-called History Of The World Is Nothing But The Creation Of Man Through Human Labor.

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The Capitalist Cannot Store Labour-power In Warehouses After He Has Bought It, As He May Do With The Raw Material.

In A Higher Phase Of Communist Society... Only Then Can The Narrow Horizon Of Bourgeois Right Be Fully Left Behind And Society Inscribe On Its Banners: From Each According To His Ability, To Each According To His Needs.

Division Of Labor

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The Redeeming Feature Of War Is That It Puts A Nation To The Test. As Exposure To The Atmosphere Reduces All Mummies To Instant Dissolution, So War Passes Supreme Judgment Upon Social Systems That Have Outlived Their Vitality.

The Method Of Production Of The Material Things Of Life Generally Determines The Social, Political And Spiritual Currents Of Life.

Society Is A Sort Of Organism On The Growth Of Which Conscious Efforts Can Exercise Little Effect.

The Ideas Of The Ruling Class Are In Every Epoch The Ruling Ideas, I.e. The Class Which Is The Ruling Material Force Of Society, Is At The Same Time Its Ruling Intellectual Force. The Class Which Has The Means Of Material Production At Its Disposal, Has Control At The Same Time Over The Means Of Mental Production, So That Thereby, Generally Speaking, The Ideas Of Those Who Lack The Means Of Mental Production Are Subject To It. The Ruling Ideas Are Nothing More Than The Ideal Expression Of The Dominant Material Relationships, The Dominant Material Relationships Grasped As Ideas.

Under No Pretext Should Arms And Ammunition Be Surrendered; Any Attempt To Disarm The Workers Must Be Frustrated, By Force If Necessary.

Labor, Being Itself A Commodity, Is Measured As Such By The Labor Time Needed To Produce The Labor-commodity. And What Is Needed To Produce This Labor-commodity? Just Enough Labor Time To Produce The Objects Indispensable To The Constant Maintenance Of Labor, That Is, To Keep The Worker Alive And In A Condition To Propagate His Race. The Natural Price Of Labor Is No Other Than The Wage Minimum.

Force Is The Midwife Of Every Old Society Pregnant With A New One.

Man Makes Religion, Religion Does Not Make Man

Criticism Of Religion

Social Progress Can Be Measured Exactly By The Social Position Of The Fair Sex.

The Most Violent, Mean And Malignant Passions Of The Human Breast, The Furies Of Private Interest.

As A Beast Of Toil An Ox Is Fixed Capital. If He Is Eaten, He No Longer Functions As An Instrument Of Labour, Nor As Fixed Capital Either.

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Exchange Value Forms The Substance Of Money, And Exchange Value Is Wealth.

The Ruling Ideas Of Each Age Have Ever Been The Ideas Of Its Ruling Class.

...the Realm Of Freedom Does Not Commence Until The Point Is Passed Where Labor Under The Compulsion Of Necessity And Of External Utility Is Required.

By The Aristocracy Of Finance Must Here Be Understood Not Merely The Great Loan Promoters And Speculators In Public Funds, In Regard To Whom It Is Immediately Obvious That Their Interests Coincide With The Interests Of The State Power. All Modern Finance, The Whole Of The Banking Business, Is Interwoven In The Closest Fashion With Public Credit.

The Education Of All Children, From The Moment That They Can Get Along Without A Mother's Care, Shall Be In State Institutions.

In Every Stockjobbing Swindle Every One Knows That Some Time Or Other The Crash Must Come, But Every One Hopes That It May Fall On The Head Of His Neighbor, After He Himself Has Caught The Shower Of Gold And Placed It In Safety.

It's Possible That I Shall Make An Ass Of Myself. But In That Case One Can Always Get Out Of It With A Little Dialectic. I Have, Of Course, So Worded My Proposition As To Be Right Either Way.

Every Emancipation Is A Restoration Of The Human World And Of Human Relationships To A Man Himself.

Darwin Has Interested Us In The History Of Nature's Technology.

There Are No Bigger Donkeys Than These Workers.... Look At Our 'craftsmen'; Sad That World History Should Be Be Made With Such People.

...the Communists Everywhere Support Every Revolutionary Movement Against The Existing Social And Political Order Of Things... They Openly Declare That Their Ends Can Be Attained Only By The Forcible Overthrow Of All Existing Social Conditions.

Private Property Has Made Us So Stupid And Partial That An Object Is Only Ours When We Have It, When It Exists For Us As Capital ... Thus All The Physical And Intellectual Senses Have Been Replaced By ... The Sense Of Having.

Communism Deprives No Man Of The Ability To Appropriate The Fruits Of His Labour. The Only Thing It Deprives Him Of Is The Ability To Enslave Others By Means Of Such Appropriations.

Religion Is The Impotence Of The Human Mind To Deal With Occurrences It Cannot Understand.

Experience Praises The Most Happy The One Who Made The Most People Happy.

Hazrat Mahal, Begum Of Oudh, During The National Liberation Uprising Of 1857-59 In India Headed The Rebels.

Very Well Then; Emancipation From Usury And Money, That Is, From Practical, Real Judaism, Would Constitute The Emancipation Of Our Time.

When People Speak Of Ideas That Revolutionize Society, They Do But Express The Fact That Within The Old Society, The Elements Of A New One Have Been Created, And That The Dissolution Of The Old Ideas Keeps Even Pace With The Dissolution Of The Old Conditions Of Existence.

Natural Science Will In Time Incorporate Into Itself The Science Of Man, Just As The Science Of Man Will Incorporate Into Itself Natural Science: There Will Be One Science.

There Must Be Something Rotten In The Very Core Of A Social System Which Increases Its Wealth Without Diminishing Its Misery

Value, Therefore, Does Not Stalk About With A Label Describing What It Is.

The Animal Is One With Its Life Activity. It Does Not Distinguish The Activity From Itself. It Is Its Activity. But Man Makes Hislife Activity Itself An Object Of His Will And Consciousness. He Has A Conscious Life Activity. It Is Not A Determination With Which He Is Completely Identified.

All Our Inventions Have Endowed Material Forces With Intellectual Life, And Degraded Human Life Into A Material Force.

Advances In Science Help To Delegitimize The Rule Of Kings And The Power Of The Church.

Both For The Production On A Mass Scale Of This Communist Consciousness, And For The Success Of The Cause Itself, The Alteration Of Men On A Mass Scale Is Necessary, An Alteration Which Can Only Take Place In A Practical Movement, A Revolution; This Revolution Is Necessary, Therefore, Not Only Because The Ruling Class Cannot Be Overthrown In Any Other Way, But Also Because The Class Overthrowing It Can Only In A Revolution Succeed In Ridding Itself Of All The Muck Of Ages And Become Fitted To Found Society Anew.

Revolutions Are The Locomotives Of History.

There Is No Royal Road To Science, And Only Those Who Do Not Dread The Fatiguing Climb Of Its Steep Paths Have A Chance Of Gaining Its Luminous Summits. (preface To The French Edition).

The Social Principles Of Christianity Preach Cowardice, Self-contempt, Abasement, Submission, Humility, In A Word All The Qualities Of The Canaille

You Will Have To Go Through 15, 20, 50 Years Of Civil Wars And National Struggles Not Only To Bring About A Change In Society But Also To Change Yourselves, And Prepare Yourselves For The Exercise Of Political Power.

In My Free Time I Do Differential And Integral Calculus.

Integral Calculus

All Social Life Is Essentially Practical. All Mysterious Which Lead Theory To Mysticism Find Their Rational Solution In Human Practice And In The Comprehension Of The Practice.

All I Know Is I'm Not A Marxist.

As The Variable Capital Always Stays In The Hands Of The Capitalist In Some Form Or Other, It Cannot Be Claimed In Any Way That It Converts Itself Into Revenue For Anyone .

Religion Is The Balm Of The People.

The Proletarians Have Nothing To Loose But Their Chains. They Have A World To Win.

An Increase In The Productivity Of Labour Means Nothing More Than That The Same Capital Creates The Same Value With Less Labour, Or That Less Labour Creates The Same Product With More Capital.

The Burgeoisie, By The Rapid Improvement Of All Instruments Of Production, By The Immensely Facilitated Means Of Communication, Draws All Nations Into Civilization.

When Commercial Capital Occupies A Position Of Unquestioned Ascendancy, It Everywhere Constitutes A System Of Plunder.

I Am Nothing But I Must Be Everything.

The Past Lies Like A Nightmare Upon The Present.

We Have No Compassion And We Ask No Compassion From You. When Our Turn Comes, We Shall Not Make Excuses For The Terror.

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.

You Are Horrified At Our Intending To Do Away With Private Property. But In Your Existing Society, Private Property Is Already Done Away With For Nine Tenths Of The Population; Its Existence For The Few Is Solely Due To Its Non-existence In The Hands Of Those Nine Tenths. You Reproach Us, Therefore, With Intending To Do Away With A Form Of Property, The Necessary Condition For Whose Existence Is The Non-existence Of Any Property For The Immense Majority Of Society.

Necessity Is Blind Until It Becomes Conscious. Freedom Is The Consciousness Of Necessity.

Money Is The Alienated Essence Of Man's Work And Existence; This Essence Dominates Him And He Worships It.

Just As The Savage Must Wrestle With Nature To Satisfy His Wants, To Maintain And Reproduce Life, So Must Civilised Man, And He Must Do So In All Social Formations And Under All Possible Modes Of Production.

All That We Want To Do Away With Is The Miserable Character Of This Appropriation, Under Which The Labourer Lives Merely To Increase Capital , And Allowed To Live Only So Far As The Interest To The Ruling Class Requires It.

Last Words Are For Those Fools Who Believe They Have Not Yet Said Enough.

The True Law Of Economics Is Chance, And We Learned People Arbitrarily Seize On A Few Moments And Establish Them As Laws.

The Better Shaped His Product, The More Misshapen The Worker.

There Is No Greater Stupidity Than For People...to Marry And So Surrender Themselves To The Small Miseries Of Domestic And Private Life.

When The Train Of History Hits A Curve, The Intellectuals Fall Off.

The Ideas Of The Ruling Class Are In Every Epoch The Ruling Ideas, I.e., The Class Which Is The Ruling Material Force Of Society, Is At The Same Time Its Ruling Intellectual Force.

The Working Men Have No Country. We Cannot Take Away From Them What They Have Not Got

It Appears Then, That Capitalist Production Comprises Conditions Independent Of Good Or Bad Will, Conditions Which Permit The Working-class To Enjoy That Relative Prosperity Only Momentarily, And At That Always Only As The Harbinger Of A Coming Crisis.

All Social Rules And All Relations Between Individuals Are Eroded By A Cash Economy, Avarice Drags Pluto Himself Out Of The Bowels Of The Earth.

Language Comes Into Being, Like Consciousness, From The Basic Need, From The Scantiest Intercourse With Other Human.

The Production Of Too Many Useful Things Results In Too Many Useless People.

The Existence Of The State Is Inseparable From The Existence Of Slavery.

Once The Inner Connection Is Grasped, All Theoretical Belief In The Permanent Necessity Of Existing Conditions Collapses Before Their Collapse In Practice -- Letter To Ludwig Kugelmann (july 11, 1868)

The Will Of The Capitalist Is Certainly To Take As Much As Possible. What We Have To Do Is Not To Talk About His Will, But To Enquire About His Power, The Limits Of That Power, And The Character Of Those Limits.

In Communist Society, Where Nobody Has One Exclusive Sphere Of Activity But Each Can Become Accomplished In Any Branch He Wishes, Society Regulates The General Production And Thus Makes It Possible For Me To Do One Thing Today And Another Tomorrow, To Hunt In The Morning, Fish In The Afternoon, Rear Cattle In The Evening, Criticize After Dinner, Just As I Have A Mind, Without Ever Becoming Hunter, Fisherman, Shepherd Or Critic.

We Should Not Say That One Man's Hour Is Worth Another Man's Hour, But Rather That One Man During An Hour Is Worth Just As Much As Another Man During An Hour. Time Is Everything, Man Is Nothing: He Is At The Most Time's Carcass.

What I Did That Was New Was To Prove That The Existence Of Classes Is Only Bound Up With Particular, Historical Phases In The Development Of Production; That The Class Struggle Necessarily Leads To The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat; And That Dictatorship Itself Only Constitutes The Transition To The Abolition Of All Classes And To A Classless Society.

If Emancipation Of The Working Classes Requires Their Fraternal Conncurrence, How Are They To Fulfill That Great Mission With A Foreign Policy In Pursuit Of Criminal Designs, Playing Upon National Prejudices, And Squandering In Piratical Wars The People's Blood And Treasure? It Was Not The Wisdom Of The Ruling Classes, But The Heroic Resistance To Their Criminal Folly By The Working Classes Of England, That Saved The West Of Europe From Plunging Headlong Into An Infamous Crusade For The Propagation Of Slavery On The Other Side Of The Atlantic.

In The National Struggles Of The Proletarians Of The Different Countries, They Point Out And Bring To The Front The Common Interest Of The Entire Proletariat, Independently Of All Nationality.

Owners Of Capital Will Stimulate Working Class To Buy More And More Of Expensive Goods, Houses And Technology, Pushing Them To Take More And More Expensive Credits, Until Their Debt Becomes Unbearable. The Unpaid Debt Will Lead To Bankruptcy Of Banks Which Will Have To Be Nationalized And State Will Have To Take The Road Which Will Eventually Lead To Communism.

Each Piece Of Money Is A Mere Coin, Or Means Of Circulation, Only So Long As It Actually Circulates.

Workers Of The World Unite; You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains.

Communist Manifesto

Consumption Is Also Immediately Production, Just As In Nature The Consumption Of The Elements And Chemical Substances Is The Production Of The Plant.

The Circulation Of Commodities Is The Original Precondition Of The Circulation Of Money.

Private Property Has Made Us So Stupid And One-sided That An Object Is Only Ours When We Have It

Parliamentary Cretinism: That Peculiar Malady Which Since 1848 Has Raged All Over The Continent, Which Holds Those Infected By It Fast In An Imaginary World And Robs Them Of All Sense, All Memory, All Understanding Of The Rude External World.

As In Private Life One Differentiates Between What A Man Thinks And Says Of Himself And What He Really Is And Does, So In Historical Struggles One Must Still More Distinguish The Language And The Imaginary Aspirations Of Parties From Their Real Organism And Their Real Interests, Their Conception Of Themselves From Their Reality.

The State Is Based On This Contradiction. It Is Based On The Contradiction Between Public And Private Life, Between Universal And Particular Interests. For This Reason, The State Must Confine Itself To Formal, Negative Activities.

The Traditions Of The Dead Generations Weigh Like A Nightmare Upon The Living.

Between Capitalist And Communist Society There Lies The Period Of The Revolutionary Transformation Of The One Into The Other. Corresponding To This Is Also A Political Transition Period In Which The State Can Be Nothing But The Revolutionary Dictatorship Of The Proletariat.

Under Private Property, Each Tries To Establish Over The Other An Alien Power, So As Thereby To Find Satisfaction Of His Own Selfish Need. The Increase In The Quantity Of Objects Is Therefore Accompanied By An Extension Of The Realm Of The Alien Powers To Which Man Is Subjected, And Every New Product Represents A New Potentiality Of Mutual Swindling And Mutual Plundering.

...the Very Cannibalism Of The Counterrevolution Will Convince The Nations That There Is Only One Way In Which The Murderous Death Agonies Of The Old Society And The Bloody Birth Throes Of The New Society Can Be Shortened, Simplified And Concentrated, And That Way Is Revolutionary Terror.

The English Have All The Material Requisites For The Revolution. What They Lack Is The Spirit Of Generalization And Revolutionary Ardour.

The First Requisite For The Happiness Of The People Is The Abolition Of Religion.

Religion Is The Opium Of The Masses.

Nothing Can Have Value Without Being An Object Of Utility.

For The Bureaucrat, The World Is A Mere Object To Be Manipulated By Him.

Religion Is The Opiate Of The People.

Nothing Is Easier Than To Give Christian Asceticism A Socialist Tinge.

Since The Working-class Lives From Hand To Mouth,it Buys As Long As It Has The Means To Buy.

The Unity Of The Bourgeoisie Can Be Shaken Only By The Unity Of The Proletariat.

Anyone Who Knows Anything Of History Knows That Great Social Changes Are Impossible Without Feminine Upheaval. Social Progress Can Be Measured Exactly By The Social Position Of The Fair Sex, The Ugly Ones Included.

The Democratic Concept Of Man Is False, Because It Is Christian. The Democratic Concept Holds That . . . Each Man Is A Sovereign Being. This Is The Illusion, Dream, And Postulate Of Christianity.

The Communist Revolution Is The Most Radical Rupture With Traditional Property Relations; No Wonder That Its Development Involves The Most Radical Rupture With Traditional Ideas.

The Directing Motive, The End And Aim Of Capitalist Production, Is To Extract The Greatest Possible Amount Of Surplus Value, And Consequently To Exploit Labor-power To The Greatest Possible Extent.

The Bourgeoisie, Wherever It Has Got The Upper Hand, Has Put An End To All Feudal, Patriarchal, Idyllic Relations. It Has Pitilessly Torn Asunder The Motley Of Ties That Bound Man To His "natural Superiors," And Left Remaining No Other Nexus Between Man And Man Than Naked Self-interest, Than Callous "cash Payment.

An Object Of Art Creates A Public Capable Of Finding Pleasure In Its Beauty. Production, Therefore, Not Only Produces An Object For The Subject, But Also A Subject For The Object.

As The Chosen People Bore In Their Features The Sign Manual Of Jehovah , So The Division Of Labour Brands The Manufacturing Workman As The Property Of Capital .

Constant Labor Of One Uniform Kind Destroys The Intensity And Flow Of A Man's Animal Spirits, Which Find Recreation And Delight In Mere Change Of Activity.

Russia Is A Name Usurped By The Muscovites. They Are Not Slavs; They Do Not Belong To The Indo-germanic Race At All, They Are Des Intrus [intruders], Who Must Be Chased Back Across The Dnieper, Etc.

Take Away A Nation's Heritage And They Are More Easily Persuaded.

Misery Motivates, Not Utopia.

Reason Has Always Existed, But Not Always In A Reasonable Form.

Communist Manifesto

In The Domain Of Political Economy, Free Scientific Inquiry Meets Not Merely The Same Enemies As In All Other Domains. The Peculiar Nature Of The Material It Deals With, Summons As Foes Into The Field Of Battle The Most Violent, Mean And Malignant Passions Of The Human Breast, The Furies Of Private Interest.

Landlords, Like All Other Men, Love To Reap Where They Never Sowed.

The First Premise Of All Human History Is, Of Course, The Existence Of Living Human Individuals. Thus The First Fact To Be Established Is The Physical Organisation Of These Individuals And Their Consequent Relation To The Rest Of Nature.

Catch A Man A Fish, And You Can Sell It To Him. Teach A Man To Fish, And You Ruin A Wonderful Business Opportunity.

Be Careful To Trust A Person Who Does Not Like Wine.

Ideas Do Not Exist Separately From Language.

I Am Stretching Out This Volume, Since Those German Dogs Estimate The Value Of Books By Their Cubic Contents.

The Country That Is More Developed Industrially Only Shows, To The Less Developed, The Image Of Its Own Future.

Philosophy Is To Science As Masturbation Is To Sex.

But There Is A Devil Of A Difference Between Barbarians Who Are Fit By Nature To Be Used For Anything, And Civilized People Who Apply Them Selves To Everything.

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