He was a 19th-century German social philosopher, revolutionary, and co-founder of modern communism and socialism. Engels had an enormous influence on the theories of marxism and dialectical materialism. His interests included the physical sciences, mathematics, anthropology, military science, and languages. Intelligent and well-educated, Engels wrote and published numerous articles and books.
His most well-known book was “The Communist Manifesto”, written in collaboration with Marx and published in 1849. He also edited volumes 2 and 3 of “Capital” after Marx’s death.
(1820-1895)
– Friedrich Engels Quotes –
The utopia begins when one undertakes “from existing conditions” to prescribe the form in which this or any other of the antitheses of present-day society is to be solved.
~ Friedrich Engels
Absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school.
~ Friedrich Engels
All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.
~ Friedrich Engels
Freedom is the recognition of necessity.
~ Friedrich Engels
The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another – no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.
~ Friedrich Engels
From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.
~ Friedrich Engels
The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.
~ Friedrich Engels
Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.
~ Friedrich Engels
The state is not abolished, it withers away.
~ Friedrich Engels
Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
~ Friedrich Engels
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
~ Friedrich Engels
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
~ Friedrich Engels
Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of idealogy [sic], that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art etc.
~ Friedrich Engels
Without analysis, no synthesis.
~ Friedrich Engels
One day we shall certainly ‘reduce’ thought experimentally to molecular and chemical motions in the brain; but does that exhaust the essence of thought?
~ Friedrich Engels
We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends — the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.
~ Friedrich Engels
In a popular war the means used by the insurgent nation cannot be measured by the commonly recognized rules of regular warfare, nor by any other abstract standard, but by the degree of civilization only attained by that insurgent nation.
~ Friedrich Engels
State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous and then dies of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of the processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished’. It withers way.
~ Friedrich Engels
The ancient Greek philosophers were all natural-born dialecticians and Aristotle, the most encyclopaedic intellect among them, had even already analysed the most essential forms of dialectical thought.
~ Friedrich Engels
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
~ Friedrich Engels
All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.
~ Friedrich Engels
The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.
~ Friedrich Engels
Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist.
~ Friedrich Engels
People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.
~ Friedrich Engels
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
~ Friedrich Engels
We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.
~ Friedrich Engels
The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply …
~ Friedrich Engels
All past history was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange.
~ Friedrich Engels
Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasing daily.
~ Friedrich Engels
