I am nothing but I must be everything.
Karl MarxRead
On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the superficiality of society as compared to the depth of intellectual thought.
Karl Marx's quote reflects on the disparity between the ordinary aspects of the bourgeoisie and the elevated thoughts of great intellectuals. He suggests that in a stagnant society, the mediocrity of common life contrasts sharply with the profound insights and ideas that could elevate the human experience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about societal values during a philosophy class.
I am nothing but I must be everything.
Religion is the opiate of the people.
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.
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.
To be radical is to grasp things by the root.
Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.
The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin.
The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.
From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.
The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.
If God is not sovereign, God is not God.
A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not seek to make converts to it.
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