The 90 best phrases and reflections of Friedrich Engels

The communist movement was a complete revolution during the 19th century, bringing ideas that gave strength to the population to fight for their rights like any wealthy person, because we should all have the same opportunities regardless of our social condition (this is what the theory said, in practice we already know how finished). This thought, later consolidated as Socialism-Communism, despite the terrible things it has brought, was promoted thanks to the collaborations of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, a man who never abandoned his ideals, not even in the most precarious.

• We recommend you read: "The 80 best phrases of Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov)"

Great quotes and reflections from Friedrich Engels

Not only was it the mainstay of Marx on his political path, but together they managed to give life to the work ‘The Communist Manifesto’. He, too, would become an important political leader of his movement and an inspirational figure for the other communists. For this reason, we leave in this article the best quotes from Friedrich Engels.

1. A people that oppresses another people cannot be free.

A phrase that is self explanatory.

2. The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

There can be no freedom for one group and oppression for others.

3. Marx was, above all, a revolutionary.

His opinion on Marx.

4. Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history.

Value that he gives to the work of his friend.

5. Christianity, especially Protestantism, is the appropriate religion for a society in which the production of goods predominates.

The effect you consider religion to have.

6. When it is possible to speak of freedom, the State as such will cease to exist.

The state needs a transformation.

7. Work is the source of all wealth, political economists claim. And it really is the source, together with nature, that provides them with the material that makes them rich.

Work is our means of subsistence.

8. From day one until now, greed was the driving spirit of civilization.

Many use their greed to create good things, while others do it to cause chaos.

9. Work is the basic and fundamental condition of all human life. And it is to such a degree that, to some extent, we must say that work has created man himself.

Reflections on the impact of work.

10. The way modern society treats the vast mass of the poor is truly scandalous.

Many discriminate against others because of their economic condition.

11. Monogamy was a great historical breakthrough.

Engels is a believer in the benefits of monogamy.

12. People think that they have taken an extraordinarily bold step when they have rid themselves of the belief in hereditary monarchy and have sworn by the democratic republic.

At the time, it must have been quite audacious.

13. Freedom does not consist in a dreamed of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and the possibility that this entails of making them work systematically towards ends defined.

Your opinion on what freedom should be.

14. The first class antagonism to appear in history coincides with the development of antagonism between men and women in monogamy.

A curious fact that makes sense.

15. In reality, the state is nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and in fact in the democratic republic it is no less so than in the monarchy.

A harsh criticism of what the State is.

16. Ideas often ignite, like electrical sparks.

A good idea always finds a way to emerge.

17. Owners of the public force and of the right to collect taxes, officials, as organs of society, now appear above it.

The change of public officials.

18. I left the company and the dinners, the port wine and the champagne of the middle classes, and I devoted my leisure hours almost exclusively to sexual intercourse with simple working men; I am happy and proud to have done it.

An interesting anecdote that lets us see a very intimate side of the communist.

19. The logic of thought must always come to the aid of the insufficiency of knowledge.

If we do not know something, the ideal is to find out what it is.

20. One day, no doubt, we will 'reduce' thinking experimentally to molecular and chemical movements in the brain; But does that exhaust the essence of thought?

Never let go of your sense of curiosity.

21. He discovered the simple fact, hitherto hidden by an overgrowth of ideology, that humanity must eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before he can devote himself to politics, science, religion, art, etc.

Marx's revolutionary discovery.

22. Everything that is real in human history becomes irrational in the process of time.

Things that were correct before are not necessarily correct now.

23. What cannot be expressed is what is not known.

That is why we must be silent when we ignore something.

24. The modern state is but a committee that administers the common problems of the bourgeois class.

The bourgeoisie is what destroys society.

25. There is another series of diseases whose direct cause is not so much the housing as the nutrition of the workers.

Good nutrition is vital for human life.

26. As Marx used to say about French Marxists in the late 1970s: all I know is that I am not a Marxist.

Recognizing the transformation of the movement by some followers.

27. Thanks to the cooperation of the hand, the organs of language and the brain, not only in each individual, but also in society, men were learning to carry out more and more complicated operations, to consider and to achieve objectives more and more elevated.

Society has the potential to achieve great goals.

28. In this sense, the theory of the communists can be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.

The primary goal of the communists.

29. It is a curious fact that with every great revolutionary movement the question of free love comes to the fore.

Love looking for a way to express itself.

30. We find two large gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of state power and exploit it for the most corrupt: the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are apparently its servants, but in reality they dominate and plunder that.

Two sides of politics.

31. Freedom is the recognition of necessity.

One of the aspects of freedom.

32. An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Without a doubt, an action is worth a lot.

33. The man also held the reins in the house; the woman was degraded, turned into the servant, in the slave of the lust of the man, in a simple instrument of reproduction.

The decline of women in history.

34. So much prudence is needed to rule an empire, like a house.

Prudence is a gift that many underestimate.

35. Religion is nothing more than a fantastic reflection, in the heads of men, of the external powers that dominate their daily existence. A reflection in which the earthly forces take on the form of the super-earthly.

Your opinion on what religion is.

36. If the Catholic Church has abolished divorce, it is probably because it has recognized that for adultery, as against death, there is no remedy that is worth.

Adultery is a crime against trust.

37. The mathematical infinity occurs in reality ...

Mathematics is part of everyday life.

38. In grammar two negations are equivalent to an affirmation, in the same way in conjugal morality two prostitutions are equivalent to a virtue.

A curious phrase about the virtues in marriage. If both are unfaithful, can they accuse each other?

39. The concentration of the population in large cities already exerts a very unfavorable influence.

The imbalance of big cities and small towns.

40. A change in quantity also implies a change in quality.

Quality is always important.

41. The possessing class rules directly through universal suffrage.

The evil of the possessing class.

42. According to Bachofen it was not the development of the real conditions of existence of men, but the religious reflection of those conditions in their brains, which determined the historical changes in the reciprocal social situation of man and of the woman.

The change of gender roles according to Bachofen.

43. Tremble, if you will, the ruling classes, at the prospect of a communist revolution.

A threat that came true.

44. What each individual wants is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one wanted.

People can become the obstacles of others.

45. The way in which the great mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous.

Society should try to protect people, not discriminate against them.

46. They are taken to big cities where they breathe a more disgusting air than in the country they have left.

The situation at that time of some workers.

47. The work begins with the development of instruments.

Tools help us improve our skills.

48. And that power, born of society, but which is placed above it and divorces itself more and more, is the State.

The origin of the State.

49. By bourgeoisie we mean the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor.

In this sentence Engels explains to us what the bourgeoisie is.

50. A revolution is a natural phenomenon governed by physical laws different from the rules that govern the development of society in normal times.

A revolution arises from the need to create a difference.

51. The emancipation of women will only be possible when women can participate in large-scale production, and domestic work no longer demands more than a negligible amount of their time.

The woman has the potential to dominate the world if that is what she sets out to do.

52. The proletarians, with it, have nothing to lose, other than their chains. They have, instead, a whole world to win.

After oppression, what arises is the need for freedom.

53. Some state laws designed to curb crime are even more criminal.

Not all laws are inclined to do justice.

54. England's industrial grandeur cannot be maintained except by barbaric treatment of workers, through the destruction of health and the social, physical and moral abandonment of generations whole.

The exploitation of people by industrialization.

55. The executive of the modern state is nothing more than a committee to administer the common affairs of the entire bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie is also in matters of justice.

56. While the oppressed class - in our case the proletariat - is not ripe to liberate itself, its majority recognizes today's social order as the only possible one, and politically forms the tail of the capitalist class, its extreme left.

No one is capable of fighting for their rights, until they are aware of their chains.

57. Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and it is enough to discover it so that by its own virtue it conquers the world.

For Engels, socialism is the correct answer to politics.

58. Are they accusing us of wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? We plead guilty to this crime.

There are those who do not see fit for people to take the power to fight for what is fair.

59. We have, therefore, an infinity not only of first but also of second degree and we can leave it to the imagination of readers construct new infinities of a higher degree in infinite space, if they have a desire to do it.

The options for a suitable policy are innumerable.

60. Terror is, for the most part, useless cruelties committed out of fear

Fear can become our biggest brake.

61. Heterism is a social institution like any other and maintains the old sexual freedom... for the benefit of men. In fact, not only tolerated, but freely practiced, especially by the ruling classes, the word is condemned.

A critique of the old practice. Engels was a faithful believer in fidelity and monogamy as a couple.

62. In reality, each mental image of the world system is and remains limited, objectively by the historical situation and subjectively by the physical and mental makeup of its author.

In this sentence he explains to us that we see things in the world according to our ability to analyze and interpret experiences.

63. The same new society, throughout the 2,500 years of its existence, has never been more than the development of a tiny minority at the expense of a vast majority of the exploited and oppressed; and this is today more than ever.

Society has undoubtedly advanced, but it still needs to continue growing much more.

64. The alliance between the government and the Stock Exchange is carried out with such greater ease, the more the debts of the State grow and the more they go concentrating in his hands the joint-stock companies, not only transportation, but also production itself, making the Stock Exchange its center.

The stock market is a fundamental part of the State.

65. The state is nothing more than an instrument of oppression of one class towards another, it is no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

Oppression exists regardless of the form of government of a nation.

66. What characterizes, above all, this family is not polygamy, which we will talk about later, but organization of a certain number of individuals, free and unfree, in a family subject to the paternal power of the head of this one.

Talking about the patriarchal family system.

67. The indigestible food of the workers is entirely unfit for the sustenance of the children; And yet the worker has neither the time nor the means to provide his children with a more adequate sustenance.

We should all have access to healthy eating.

68. In nature nothing happens in isolation.

Every individual action has group consequences.

69. Monogamy does not appear in any way in history as a reconciliation between man and woman.

Monogamy is a commitment between two people.

70. Everything must justify its existence before the court of reason, or renounce its existence.

Things must be reasonable.

71. We have no compassion and we do not ask for compassion.

A tough statement about your intentions.

72. The social classes of the ninth century had not been formed in the decline of a dying civilization, but in the birth pains of a new civilization.

The formation of social classes according to Engels.

73. In a people's war, the means used by the insurgent nation cannot be measured by the rules commonly recognized by regular warfare, nor by any other abstract norm, but by the degree of civilization that that nation reached insurgent.

Victory is measured according to the extent of civilization achieved.

74. Each phenomenon affects another and is, in turn, influenced by it; and it is generally the neglect of this movement and this universal interaction that prevents our naturalists from perceiving the simplest things clearly.

A critique of the naturalists' view?

75. Without analysis, there is no synthesis.

There can not be one without the other.

76. By proletariat, the class of modern salaried workers who, having no means of production of their own, are forced to sell their labor power in order to live.

The crudest expression of worker exploitation.

77. The hand of man has reached that degree of perfection that has made it capable of giving life, as if by magic, to the paintings of Raphael, the statues of Thorwaldsen and the music of Paganini.

The virtues of human talents.

78. The overthrow of maternal rights was the great historical defeat of the female sex throughout the world.

A vision of the oppression of the rights of mothers over their children.

79. Political power, properly speaking, is simply the organized power of one class to oppress another.

The dark side of political power.

80. The abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary... The result can only be the victory of the proletariat.

For Engels, all economic evil was caused by private institutions.

81. When our turn comes, we will not make excuses for terror.

When the time comes, give it your all.

82. The characteristic feature of the period of barbarism is the domestication and breeding of animals and the cultivation of plants.

Agriculture was undoubtedly the greatest human evolution.

83. The ancient Greek philosophers were all natural dialecticians, and Aristotle, the most encyclopedic intellect among them, had already analyzed the most essential forms of dialectical thought.

Reflections on Greek philosophy.

84. The sale of children by the father: this was the first fruit of parental right and monogamy!

A critique of how the patriarchy viewed its children as an object of commerce.

85. The state is not abolished, it withers away.

At some point, the state is nothing.

86. Nature is the proof of dialectics, and for modern science it must be said that it has provided this proof with very rich materials that increase daily.

Nature can also inspire politicians.

87. But real terrorists, terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, contemptuous and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive and deceptive, and in both senses they are reputation…

Enemies will always use dirty tricks to defeat their opponents.

88. The materialist conception of History starts from the preposition that the production of the means for the maintenance of human life, and, after production, the change of the things produced, constitute the basis of the whole structure Social.

Materialism and consumerism is an evil that can lead a society to degeneration.

89. A revolution is needed that completely transforms the existing mode of production and, with it, the current social order.

There will always be historical contexts where revolutions are necessary.

90. All history has been the history of the class struggle between the dominated classes at different stages of social development.

History is a great evolution of struggles and victories to secure rights.