I am nothing but I must be everything.
Karl MarxRead
Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.
Interpretation
Scientific truth often contrasts with common perceptions, which can be misleading.
In this quote, Karl Marx highlights the idea that scientific truth often reveals complexities and contradictions that are not apparent in everyday experience. He asserts that what we commonly perceive can often be a deceptive simplification, and true understanding requires a deeper, more analytical approach that transcends initial appearances.
In practice
During a lecture on the nature of scientific inquiry, this quote can be used to illustrate the difference between layman's perceptions and the complexities revealed through science.
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.
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control stops with the shore.
Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?
Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.
If the whole responsibility is thrown upon our own shoulders, we shall be at our highest and best; when we have nobody to grope towards, no devil to lay our blame upon, no Personal God to carry our burdens, when we are alone responsible, then we shall rise to our highest and best. I am responsible for my fate, I am the bringer of good unto myself, I am the bringer of evil.
He might have been encased in a thick glass bubble, so separate did he feel from his three dining companions. It was a sensation with which he was only too familiar, that of walking in a giant sphere of worry, enclosed by it, watching his own terrors roll by, obscuring the outside world.
Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.
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