I am nothing but I must be everything.
Karl MarxRead
Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
Interpretation
Modern society has created powerful systems that we cannot fully control.
In this quote, Karl Marx describes how the advancements and complexities of bourgeois society—rooted in production, exchange, and property—have resulted in forces beyond our control, akin to a sorcerer summoning powers that ultimately overwhelm him. This metaphor warns us of the unforeseen consequences and loss of control that can arise from our own creations and societal structures.
In practice
During a lecture on capitalism, this quote can illustrate the unforeseen consequences of industrialization.
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.
Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
Sometimes we exclude things in ourselves in order to be like everybody else around us-our ethnicity, our social backgrounds, our ideas. What kind of world is it that will not allow me to be myself, and is it really good for me to be there? What part of me will die a slow death if I stay?
Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics; they desire our blood not our pain.
At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.
In the eyes of government we are just one race here. It is American.
Divinity is not something supernatural that ever and again invades the natural order in a crashing miracle. Divinity is not in some remote heaven, seated on a throne. Divinity is love. . . . Wherever goodness, beauty, truth, love, are-there is the divine.
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