267 quotes found
"For I am of the opinion... that the reconquest of the German speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?"
"Today I have shaved my moustache off again and buried the youthful corpse with much wailing. I look like a woman; it is shameful; and if I had known that without a moustache I should look such a sight I would not have hacked it off. As I stood before the mirror, scissors in hand, and had shorn off the right side, the Old Man came into the office and had to laugh out loud, when he saw me with half a moustache. But now I shall let it grow again, for I cannot show myself anywhere. In the Academy of Singing I was the only one with a moustache and always used to laugh at the philistines who could not marvel enough that I had the audacity to go so unshaven into decent society. The ladies, incidentally, liked it very much, and so did the Old Man. Only last night at the concert six young dandies stood around me, all in tail-coats and kid-gloves, and I stood among them in an ordinary coat and without gloves. The fellows made remarks all evening about me and my bristling upper lip. The best of it is that three months ago nobody knew me here and now all the world does, just because of the moustache! Oh, the philistines!"
"How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected? The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution."
"For the first time in the revolutionary movement of 1848, for the first time since 1793, a nation surrounded by superior forces dares to counter the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury by revolutionary passion, the terreur blanche by the terreur rouge. For the first time after a long period we meet with a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person — Lajos Kossuth."
"There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples (Völkerruinen), the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples (') always become fanatical s of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution."
"How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis? The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these nations, large and small. All the earlier up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality — the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. (Weltsturm). For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary."
"The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav ' and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward."
"It is clear even from the English press that Girardin doesn't support Cavaignac. But the very fact that he remarked on the brightness of Cavaignac's prospects is enough to characterise the situation. You mentioned the possibility that the majority [in the Legislative Assembly] might conclude an agreement with Bonaparte and endeavour to carry out an illegal revision; if they do so, I think it will go awry. They'll never succeed so long as it's opposed by Thiers, Changarnier and the Débats and their respective adherents. It would be too fine an opportunity for Cavaignac; and in that case he could, I believe, count on the army. If there's a fracas next year, Germany will be in the devil of a position. France, Italy and Poland all have an interest in her dismemberment. As you'll have seen, Mazzini has even promised the Czechs rehabilitation. Apart from Hungary, Germany would have only one possible ally, Russia — provided that a peasants' revolution had taken place there. Otherwise we shall have a guerre à mort with our noble friends from all points of the compass, and it's very questionable how the business will end."
"The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me that the Poles are une nation foutue [a finished nation] who can only continue to serve a purpose until such time as Russia herself becomes caught up into the agrarian revolution. From that moment Poland will have absolutely no raison d'étre any more. The Poles' sole contribution to history has been to indulge in foolish pranks at once valiant and provocative. Nor can a single moment be cited when Poland, even if only by comparison with Russia, has successfully represented progress or done anything of historical significance."
"Conclusion: To take as much as possible away from the Poles in the West, to man their fortresses, especially Posen, with Germans on the pretext of defence, to let them stew in their own juice, send them into battle, gobble bare their land, fob them off with promises of Riga and Odessa and, should it be possible to get the Russians moving, to ally oneself with the latter and compel the Poles to give way. Every inch of the frontier between Memel and Cracow we cede to the Poles will, militarily speaking, be utterly ruinous to this already wretchedly weak frontier, and will leave exposed the whole of the Baltic coast as far as Stettin. Besides, I am convinced that, come the next fracas, the entire Polish insurrection will be confined to Poseners and Galician nobility together with a few who have come over from the Kingdom, this having been bled so white that it's capable of nothing more, and that the pretensions of these knights, unless supported by French, Italians and Scandinavians, etc., and bolstered up by rumpuses on the part of the Czechs, will founder on the wretchedness of their performance. A nation which can muster 20,000 to 30,000 men at most, is not entitled to a voice. And Poland certainly could not muster very much more."
"Lassalle. It would be a pity about the fellow because of his great ability, but these goings-on are really too bad. He was always a man one had to keep a devilish sharp eye on and as a real Jew from the Slav border was always to exploit anyone for his own private ends on party pretexts. And then his urge to push his way into polite society, de parvenir, if only for appearance's sake, to disguise the greasy Breslau Jew with all kinds of pomade and paint was always repulsive."
"What do you say to the elections in the factory districts? Once again the proletariat has discredited itself terribly... [I]t cannot be denied that the increase of working-class voters has brought the Tories more than their mere additional percentage and has improved their relative position."
"Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe."
"La Terreur, das sind großenteils nutzlose Grausamkeiten, begangen von Leuten, die selbst Angst haben, zu ihrer Selbstberuhigung."
"Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself."
"Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research."
"Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends."
"Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity."
"Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science, without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised. In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism."
"The state is not "abolished," it withers away."
"The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the ."
"We are now approaching a , in which the old economic foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose through the concentration of considerable wealth in one hand — a man's hand — and from the endeavor to bequeath this wealth to the children of this man to the exclusion of all others. This necessitated monogamy on the woman's, but not on the man's part. Hence this monogamy of women in no way hindered open or secret polygamy of men. Now, the impending social revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and inheritable wealth—the means of production—into social property. Since monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it disappear when these causes are abolished? One might reply, not without reason: not only will it not disappear, but it will rather be perfectly realized. For with the transformation of the means of production into collective property, wagelabor will also disappear, and with it the proletariat and the necessity for a certain, statistically ascertainable number of women to surrender for money. Prostitution disappears and monogamy, instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a reality—for men also. At all events, the situation will be very much changed for men. But also that of women, and of all women, will be considerably altered. With the transformation of the means of production into collective property the monogamous family ceases to be the of society. The private household changes to a social industry. The care and education of children become? a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the "consequences" which now forms the essential social factor—moral and economic—hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man. Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more unconventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame? And finally, did we not see that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution, though antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the same social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at the same time monogamy?"
"With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single scurvy individual–here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements."
"It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts."
"My dear Laura. My congratulations to Paul le candidat du Jardin des Plantes—et des animaux. Being, in his quality as a nigger, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district. Let us hope the animaux will have the best of it in this struggle against the bêtes.—I am rather surprised at Basly's holding back, but if a set of men succeeds in being excluded from the press altogether, what can they expect? From Mesa's letter in the Spanish Socialista I See that the Blanquists too are making volte-face and approaching the Possibilists—another bad sign. A little success—even relative—at the elections would therefore be very welcome when our people are under such a momentary cloud. I know very well that that cloud will pass, that Parisian party life is a continual change of ups and downs, but at the same time I cannot but wish that next time they will cherish their own little weekly paper a little more than those disreputable dailies to which they work hard to give a reputation in order to be kicked out as soon as they have succeeded."
"By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live."
"Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late ’seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist."
"What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed."
"People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in and swear by the . 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."
"The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society—the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society—this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished.” It dies out."
"History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time [1848] was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production."
"The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries," the "rebels"—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité notes tue, legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life."
"Die Nationalökonomie entstand als eine natürliche Folge der Ausdehnung des Handels, und mit ihr trat an die Stelle des einfachen, unwissenschaftlichen Schachers ein ausgebildetes System des erlaubten Betrugs, eine komplette Bereicherungswissenschaft."
"Diese aus dem gegenseitigen Neid und der Habgier der Kaufleute entstandene Nationalökonomie oder Bereicherungswissenschaft trägt das Gepräge der ekelhaftesten Selbstsucht auf der Stirne."
"Das Merkantilsystem hatte noch eine gewisse unbefangene, katholische Geradheit und verdeckte das unsittliche Wesen des Handels nicht im mindesten. ... Als aber der ökonomische Luther, Adam Smith, die bisherige Ökonomie kritisierte, hatten sich die Sachen sehr geändert. ... An die Stelle der katholischen Geradheit trat protestantische Gleisnerei."
"Natürlich ist es im Interesse des Handelnden, mit dem einen, von welchem er wohlfeil kauft, wie mit dem andern, an welchen er teuer verkauft, sich in gutem Vernehmen zu halten. Es ist also sehr unklug von einer Nation gehandelt, wenn sie bei ihren Versorgern und Kunden eine feindselige Stimmung nährt. Je freundschaftlicher, desto vorteilhafter. Dies ist die Humanität des Handels, und diese gleisnerische Art, die Sittlichkeit zu unsittlichen Zwecken zu mißbrauchen, ist der Stolz des Systems der Handelsfreiheit."
"Ihr habt die kleinen Monopole vernichtet, um das EINE große Grundmonopol, das Eigentum, desto freier und schrankenloser wirken zu lassen; ihr habt die Enden der Erde zivilisiert, um neues Terrain für die Entfaltung eurer niedrigen Habsucht zu gewinnen, ihr habt die Völker verbrüdert, aber zu einer Brüderschaft von Dieben."
"Ihr habt ... die Kriege vermindert, um im Frieden desto mehr zu verdienen, um die Feindschaft der einzelnen, den ehrlosen Krieg der Konkurrenz, auf die höchste Spitze zu treiben! - Wo habt ihr etwas aus reiner Humanität, aus dem Bewußtsein der Nichtigkeit des Gegensatzes zwischen dem allgemeinen und individuellen Interesse getan? Wo seid ihr sittlich gewesen, ohne interessiert zu sein, ohne unsittliche, egoistische Motive im Hintergrund zu hegen?"
"Nachdem die liberale Ökonomie ihr Bestes getan hatte, um durch die Auflösung der Nationalitäten die Feindschaft zu verallgemeinern, die Menschheit in eine Horde reißender Tiere - und was sind Konkurrenten anders? - zu verwandeln, die einander ebendeshalb auffressen, WEIL jeder mit allen andern gleiches Interesse hat, nach dieser Vorarbeit blieb ihr nur noch ein Schritt zum Ziele übrig, die Auflösung der Familie. Um diese durchzusetzen, kam ihr eine eigene schöne Erfindung, das Fabriksystem, zu Hülfe."
"Die Nachfrage des Ökonomen ist nicht die wirkliche Nachfrage, seine Konsumtion ist eine künstliche. Dem Ökonomen ist nur der ein wirklich Fragender, ein wirklicher Konsument, der für das, was er empfängt, ein Äquivalent zu bieten hat."
"I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the , and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life—many an hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because thus I got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of every one but an English money-monger."
"The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death."
"The bourgeoisie ... lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!"
"Der ganze Unterschied gegen die alte, offenherzige Sklaverei ist nur der, dass der heutige Arbeiter frei zu sein scheint, weil er nicht auf einmal verkauft wird, sondern stückweise, pro Tag, pro Woche, pro Jahr, und weil nicht ein Eigenthümer ihn dem andern verkauft, sondern er sich selbst auf diese Weise verkaufen muss, da er ja nicht der Sklave eines Einzelnen, sondern der ganzen besitzenden Klasse ist."
"I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted."
"The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left."
"How is it possible that the poorer classes can remain healthy and have a reasonable expectation of life under such conditions? What can one expect but that they should suffer from continual outbreaks of epidemics and an excessively low expectation of life? The physical condition of the workers shows a progressive deterioration."
"The bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen.""
"True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law."
"Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat."
"The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition."
"There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today."
"The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers."
"The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie."
"The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat."
"Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life."
"The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole."
"The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries."
"The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general."
"The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. ... The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences."
"The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation. The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian."
"Big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries. It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class."
"Wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto ruling classes, the aristocracy, the , and their representative, the . The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the entailment of estates – in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition – that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital."
"The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way."
"Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of . In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters – that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the , and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government."
"Everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers. For, since the proletarians can be employed only by capital, and since capital extends only through employing labor, it follows that the growth of the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital. Simultaneously, this process draws members of the bourgeoisie and proletarians together into the great cities where industry can be carried on most profitably, and by thus throwing great masses in one spot it gives to the proletarians a consciousness of their own strength. Moreover, the further this process advances, the more new labor-saving machines are invented, the greater is the pressure exercised by big industry on wages, which, as we have seen, sink to their minimum and therewith render the condition of the proletariat increasingly unbearable. The growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat thus joins with its rising power to prepare a proletarian social revolution."
"Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter."
"It makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all."
"Big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom. It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions. We see with the greatest clarity: (i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and (ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether."
"Abolish competition and replace it with association."
"Since the by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the of goods."
"The abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand."
"Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations. Private property has not always existed. When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order."
"So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the and extending the forces of production – so long as this is not possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society's productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development."
"The abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary. ... The outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat."
"In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity. What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat."
"Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat."
"Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country's productive forces."
"When all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain."
"By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries."
"It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range."
"What will be the consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property? Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished. There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past."
"Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone. The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of private property and is held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will assure to society all the products it needs. In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members."
"Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety."
"Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other."
"The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property."
"What will be the influence of communist society on the family? It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents."
"Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it."
"What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities? The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property."
"All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance."
"Some propose mere welfare measures – while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow."
"Democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists. It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences."
"Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it."
"From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say individuality vanishes."
"Comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning."
"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrie Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free.""
"That the Materialistic Socialists will improve H. [History] for the poor. Their best writer, Engels, made known the errors and the horrors of our Factory System."
"Engels always considered himself a junior partner, and so, without doubt, he was. But that does not lessen his role. Had he not been the junior partner, much for which his senior partner is known would not have been done."
"Friedrich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” What does “regression into barbarism” mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization."
"Engels's analysis has faced criticism in the twentieth century, both for its anthropological inaccuracy and for its theoretical confusion. Simone de Beauvoir found the materialist position inadequate to describe the nature of female subordination. "Historical materialism takes for granted facts that call for explanations.... It cannot provide solutions for the problems we have raised, because these concern the whole man and not that abstraction: Homo economicus." Simone de Beauvoir argued that woman's oppression is at bottom not based on economic factors, for "if the human consciousness had not included the original category of the Other and an original aspiration to dominate the Other, the invention of the bronze tool could not have caused the oppression of woman." More recently Ann Lane has attacked not materialism but Engels's inconsistency in applying it. She has argued that Engels mistakenly believed "that the responsibilities of home and family, and the economic ties that bind them together, are not an important part of what establishes their cohesion, that society can remove a vital function of an institution in order to perfect it. Socialist society will strip the family of most of its traditional jobs, but the family itself, in its pristine state, untouched by history or reality, shall remain.""
"Today in Korea—in Southeast Asia—in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East—in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage—what sacrifice—what determination never to rest until victory!...And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an “American Century” blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by—that we now live in a people’s century—that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics...One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future."
"You cannot conquer an awakened people. You cannot Prussianize Belgium and France. You cannot eradicate the teachings of Marx and Engels from the minds of hundreds of thousands of German Socialists. Surely they would find some way of uniting in spirit and in deed with the comrades of other nations in case of such an invasion on the part of a government which they had always understood and denounced."
"Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
"Families are the best place to learn and practice mutual tolerance and acceptance."
"Charity begins in your own family. "Charitable spirits” mustn’t forget to keep their own slates clean, to address problems and inequities within their own four walls with decency and fairness before trying to make the world a better place. People who aren’t willing to do that are not sincere in their claim to benevolence."
"We must not forget that mankind depends largely on animals, therefore we have a responsibility for their welfare. If we destroy them — we destroy ourselves."
""Tolerance" is not only the acceptance that people, as diverse they may be, have the right to be as they are and to live in peace together. Tolerance — in the context of business — is also the recognition that to get what you want, you have to give something in return."
"People of different ethnic and religious backgrounds were able to do business together despite language and other barriers. They recognized that to get what they wanted; they had to give something in return. There was a form of partnership based on mutual benefit. That partnership was underpinned by "tolerance"."
"Business is globalizing so fast that it has led to the often quoted ‘clash of civilizations’. People simply have not had time to get to know and understand people of other cultures sufficiently to live and work in harmony."
"This "Clash of Civilizations" has led to a "Clash of Religions", leading in turn to war, terror and extreme poverty."
"If Western firms pay developing countries' suppliers' starvation wages in order to feed the West's ever increasing consumer demand, can we call that ‘partnership’?"
"The development of a country has to start at the foundation of the society, the "family"."
"The most powerful tool to lift families out of extreme poverty is to grant micro-loans to women."
"Micro-finance is a wonderful opportunity for businesses. By investing a small portion of their income in micro-finance projects, they not only take an active part in business ethics, but they also gain future business partners and consumers."
"The first hundred thousand—that was hard to get; but afterwards it was easy to make more."
"Could I begin life again, knowing what I know now, and had money to invest, I would buy every foot of land on the island of Manhattan."
"The persecution of Jews in occupied Poland meant that we could see horror emerging gradually in many ways. In 1939, they were forced to wear Jewish stars, and people were herded and shut up into ghettos. Then, in the years '41 and '42 there was plenty of public evidence of pure sadism. With people behaving like pigs, I felt the Jews were being destroyed. I had to help them. There was no choice."
"I knew the people who worked for me. When you know people, you have to behave towards them like human beings."
"I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more."
"What is there to say? They are my friends. I would do it again, over and over — for I hate cruelty and intolerance."
"Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system."
"There was no choice. If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?"
"Now you are finally with me, you are safe now. Don't be afraid of anything. You don't have to worry anymore."
"We gave up many times, but he always lifted our spirits … Schindler tried to help people however he could. That is what we remember."
"Oskar Schindler not only saved the lives of 1200 Jews — he saved our faith in humanity …"
"He was a gambler, who loved living on the edge. He loved outsmarting the SS. I would not be alive today if it wasn't for Oscar Schindler. To us he was our God, our Father, our protector."
"I don't know what his motives were, even though I knew him very well. I asked him and I never got a clear answer and the film doesn't make it clear, either. But I don't give a damn. What's important is that he saved our lives."
"If he was a virtuous, honest guy, no one in a corrupt, greedy system like the SS would accept him. … In a weird world that celebrated death, he recognized the Jews as humans. Schindler used corrupt ways, creativity and ingenuity against the monster machine dedicated to death."
"What I’ll say is nothing poetic, but I will repeat till the end of my days that the first time I was given life by my parents and the second time by Oskar Schindler. In ‘44 there were around 700 women transported from Płaszów, 300 of whom were on his list, and he fought for us like a lion, because they didn’t want to let us out of Auschwitz. He was offered better and healthier "material" from new transports, unlike us, who had spent several years in the camp. But he got us out .. he saved us."
"He came to my house once, and I put a bottle of cognac in front of him, and he finished it in one sitting. When his eyes were flickering — he wasn't drunk — I said this is the time to ask him the question "why"? His answer was "I was a Nazi, and I believed that the Germans were doing wrong … when they started killing innocent people — and it didn't mean anything to me that they were Jewish, to me they were just human beings, menschen — I decided I am going to work against them and I am going to save as many as I can." And I think that Oscar told the truth, because that's the way he worked."
"Oskar Schindler was a modern Noah … he saved individuals, husbands and wives and their children, families. It was like the saying: To save one life is to save the whole world. … In 1944, he was a very wealthy man, a multimillionaire. He could have taken the money and gone to Switzerland … But instead, he gambled his life and all of his money to save us."
"In spite of his flaws, Oscar had a big heart and was always ready to help whoever was in need. He was affable, kind, extremely generous and charitable, but at the same time, not mature at all. He constantly lied and deceived me, and later returned feeling sorry, like a boy caught in mischief, asking to be forgiven one more time — and then we would start all over again."
"There were SS guards but he would say "Good morning" to you. He was a chain smoker and he'd throw the cigarette on the floor after only two puffs, because he knew the workers would pick it up after him. To me he was an angel. Because of him I was treated like a human being. And because of him I survived. … What people don't understand about Oscar is the power of the man, his strength, his determination. Everything he did he did to save the Jews. Can you imagine what power it took for him to pull out from Auschwitz 300 people? At Auschwitz, there was only one way you got out, we used to say. Through the chimney! Understand? Nobody ever got out of Auschwitz. But Schindler got out 300 ….!"
"We do not forget the sorrows of Egypt, we do not forget Haman, we do not forget Hitler. Thus, among the unjust, we do not forget the just. Remember Oskar Schindler."
"On the day the armistice was signed, Emilie Schindler recalled how her husband ordered loudspeakers to be installed at the factory and assembled all the workers to listen to Winston Churchill announcing the unconditional surrender of the Germans. Then, his wife at his side, he announced that in view of the situation the factory would close and everyone was free to go where they pleased. He regretted that there was nothing more he could do for them. "I felt very proud to be there at his side," Emilie Schindler recalled. The workers then prepared a document, which most of them signed, testifying to what the Schindlers had done for them."
"Supermodels, like we once were, don't exist any more."
"The Jews who already have been ousted were put out because they were morally and politically unfit to safeguard German interests."
"In the last 14 years Jewry has achieved positions of influence which it has grossly misused morally, financially and politically in an unheard-of manner, with the result that the German people crumbled morally, financially, and politically."
"The same Jewry now is seeking to smirch Germany's renaissance."
"Anti-Semitism is not based on strictly religious grounds and is not directed against the Jewish faith as such. However, all German Christians resent and denounce the fact that the Jews have been the chief advocates of atheism. They have influenced the workers' children through the Communist youth organizations, of which they are the leading spirit..."
"If we had wanted to conduct a pogrom against the Jews, it would all have been over now."
"Tell him the Reichstag is burning."
"The place looks like a delicatessen... You could have opened up a flower and fruit and wine shop with all the stuff stacked there. People were sending presents from all over Germany and Hitler had grown visibly fatter on the proceeds."
"I had by this time heard a number of his public speeches and was beginning to understand the pattern of their appeal. The first secret lay in his choice of words. Every generation develops its own vocabulary of catchwords and phrases, and these date thoughts and utterances. My own father talked like a contemporary of Bismarck, the people of my own age bore the stamp of Wilhelm II, but Hitler had caught the casual camaraderie of the trenches, and without stooping to slang, except for special effects, managed to talk like a member of his audience. In describing the difficulties of the housewife without enough money to buy the buy the food her family needed in the Viktualien Market he would produce just the phrases she would have used herself to describe her difficulties, if she had been able to formulate them. Where other national orators gave the painful impression of talking down to their audience, he had his priceless gift of expressing exactly their own thoughts."
"An eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind."
"In this job an illusion of beauty is sold which doesn’t really exist like that. It’s like a work of art, an act. I cry in front of the camera but am not really sad. I’ve just come from a job, am made-up and made to look beautiful with fantastic clothes and hair and nails all done."
"When I saw him, I was like, wow! He is different and so tall and dark and just handsome. I saw the package — and I mean the whole package, literally. I was like, "That is a man.""
"I have the most romantic husband. I do."
"I know a lot of people talk about Seal's bicycle shorts, but it is the truth! That is what he was wearing the first time I met him and I was overwhelmed."
"I just think if you have an emotion and you let that go that moment might pass. If you don't open the door for the person to come in, it would have just been like, "Nice to meet you — goodbye.""
"My parents were free about nudity, and we are too. I’d like our children to feel unashamed of whatever shape they are. People should worry about other things."
"We went somewhere very nice for dinner — it was very good but I can't tell you exactly what we did. It would be too naughty and you can’t run it anyway. It would just be bloop bleep bloop bloop bleep. But it was a very good first date."
"Sexy for me is a curvy woman — doesn't have to be skinny, which I hate anyway. I'm glad [the fashion industry] is changing slowly a little bit now to get more into the boobs and hips again."
"For me the most important thing was always that you have something in mind that you want to do, that you enjoy doing, because a lot of people have a job, but they're not happy. I think you have to think about what it is you really want to do in life and pursue that, and do it with fun; have a smile on your face, because then you're happy. You're happy and you can be open, you can be nice with people, and you have a different appearance and feeling of life than when you are in a job you hate. So for me that was always the most important thing."
"I think that everybody is beautiful in his or her own way. If you smile a lot and are confident, then you are a gorgeous person. I don't know whether my looks come from God. I'm not really religious. I don't really know what I am. I'm just trying to be a good person. I am who I am."
"I have a woman's body: I have hips, I have boobs, I have a butt. There is nothing I can change about those things even if I lose weight. You have to learn to accept your body and like your body. But, it's true, when I started modeling people were always telling me that I had to change. They told me to cut my hair because long hair is not versatile enough. And they gave me this stuff to put in my water. They said: "Drink this and then you won't be so hungry, dah-dee-dah-dee-dah..." I said: "OK, great," but I never took any of it."
"I think that you have to do whatever feels good for you. As a woman, you should feel glamorous, beautiful and confident. You should be unique. For me, if something doesn't move you in that direction, then why do it? I have considered doing Playboy. I have had offers on the table many times. But then, it has to work the way I want it to. I mean, I have no problem being naked at all — I come from a place where I am used to running around naked. But you still have to feel confident and beautiful about it, and I had a checklist of how I wanted certain things and they wanted other things, so in the end, we didn't agree."
"In Germany—and this started with a newspaper headline — they call us “the Patchwork Family.” I was, like, Hmm, is this an insult or is this positive? I talked to Seal about it, and we’re, like, it’s actually kind of great — we’re all different shades and we came together and we all love each other. They may call it black and white, but I’m not white, I’m a shade of brown and so is our daughter, Leni. She’s the lightest, then it’s me, then it’s our son, and then it’s Seal. So I think, Hey, it’s actually kind of nice to have a 'patchwork family.'"
"I jumped into the water with 45 sharks without a cage in the Bahamas for a Discovery Channel show. That was a really good experience. I'm not saying that everyone should swim with sharks, but sometimes you have to jump over your own shadow in order to learn something that you will never forget for the rest of your life. Then you know you can conquer your fears."
"Fashion shows have never been my thing. I don't look thin enough for the runway. The other girls were always much taller and skinnier. But I've never starved myself or done crazy things just to be thin like a rail."
"People in the business always say, "You look fabulous." You get that all the time and it kind of goes in one ear and out the other because most of the time they just say that to make you feel good. It's nice when you hear it from an ordinary person and then I appreciate it."
"I'm a very driven person. I'm always going after my goals. You just get up in the morning and kick yourself in the butt. I'd like to show people that they can have that same drive to go where they want to go. It's up to you and not to anybody else."
"I always think, Look at how people were before they were pregnant. If you were a toned, healthy, energetic person, most likely you will be like that again. A lot of people come to me, and they’re like, "Will I look like you after I have the baby?" And I say, "Well, how were you before?" You can’t kid yourself."
"If you love what you do, you can balance and you can juggle (work and family). You have to set your priorities straight. You can't just work, work, work. Because then all of a sudden, you don't have a family...then why did you work so much when you're all by yourself in the end? So for me, I always wanted to have a family, for me that was the most important thing, and I found a man that wanted to have that with me."
"[In America] people are a little bit more scared to show their bodies. I grew up different. Nudity was a common thing. We went camping on nude beaches in Italy. When my parents were still sleeping, I'd just go outside and run to the beach without anything on."
"My philosophy is that, in life, you have to want something. If you just say "la-la-la" and go through life without a goal, nothing will happen."
"I know from people I work with, that people say "I want to have Heidi’s career," and my friends are like, "but she also works very hard." It's the truth! It's not as if I sit back and watch things fly onto my plate. I went for a lot of the things. (Success) doesn't happen by waiting for things to happen because there are other people who are hungry. The early bird catches a worm."
"I dont think it makes a difference if you have children or you don't have children. I think it's all in the head about how you feel and, I don't know, I always like to be active and work out and eat right and just be active so I never see it as, oh when you're a mom you can't be sexy or you cant be in lingerie anymore looking good."
"A size zero? I've never heard of that. That didn't exist when I was growing up. When did that start? What does it mean? It means a person is not there, no? It makes no sense."
"Modelling is a job. For girls who want to be successful it's not something they should approach lightly. You should be professional, show up on time, prepare, and earn your money. Girls should also be aware of what they're expected to do at a photo shoot in terms of nudity, since there is often that kind of pressure — especially when you're just starting out and trying to make your mark. I also tell them they have to get a thicker skin. You have to handle criticism. All that stuff. A lot of people are looking at you and judging you. That's the nature of the job."
"For me, life is about enjoying yourself because you only live once. We should try to make the most of things and follow our dreams."
"I always treated modeling as a business and I've always been very organized. From the very start, I would keep clippings of my magazine spreads and ask my agency to find out where my photo shoots were being published. I also think I had an advantage in that I was more centered and wasn't into partying and living the high life. I had fun, but I was reasonable about it!"
"I'm never uncomfortable being naked. I don't have a problem with my body."
"I don’t know why he said that. Maybe he wanted to be in the paper? Maybe he doesn’t understand what I do? It’s bizarre to me that he says he doesn’t know who I am because he’s dressed me in the past. I’ve worn Karl Lagerfeld. Not even Chanel—his line. Lagerfeld doesn’t just send random things everywhere, so it was a big thing for me [to wear his label] to the CFDA Awards a few years ago. I don’t know how he missed that, when he dressed me that time. But you know, it’s cool. People can say whatever they want to say. You can’t please everybody, and you can’t live your life wanting to please everybody either."
"You have to just do your thing. As long as you don't hurt anybody along the way."
"You can’t look at Hollywood and blame it, you have to make up your own mind whether you want to be fit, or super skinny. You can’t blame other people. It’s your own choice and if you have children, it is up to the parent to educate your children so they are healthy and they don’t go into a direction of anorexia or obesity. It is up to you as a parent, it is hard to feed children right. I deal with it on a daily basis; it is much harder to make sure they eat right."
"Nowadays children look at everyone in the magazines and they want to be a basketball star or on a television show, but there is only so many people who can do those things and not that you shouldn’t aim or dream for these things, but there are so many other fantastic jobs. So it’s good to talk about how to get there and how difficult it is to get there."
"I think if you put a smile on people's faces, they give that back to you."
"I told Seal pretty early. He was there from the very beginning. He's always been Dad."
"If we don't take that time (to be romantic), then it's karate, then it's ballet, and then there's Christmas, and then my husband is flying off to tour around the world."
"Models have a sell-by date. There are certain jobs I don't do anymore, like the young, sexy, cute things for teenagers, or even 25-year-old girls. I go in a different bracket now."
"They're photographs by Adam Fuss. He's an artist. They are beautiful, artistic photos - more silhouettes than anything else. It's not like, "Hey, Mom and Dad are naked, come check it out!" But if I go to the bathroom and my kid walks in, I'm not going to be like, "Oh my God! Close the door!" They see their parents naked all the time. We are not ashamed."
"My lifestyle is very healthy. I eat very healthy and we cook at home. We don't eat out a lot, we don't go out for fast food a lot -- and it's the same with the children. I'm a pain in the butt with my children. I want them to eat right. They hate me for it a lot of times, but I don't want to make my life easy and skip those roles that I feel like I have to have as a mother."
"I don’t think that it's like an obligation because you are known or anything like that. But if I was Heidi Klum still living in Bergisch Gladbach, no one would listen to me, and no one would care. So I think that it’s great that because of what I do I can raise awareness. You know, I would still want to do it if I was still in my hometown. It’s just that no one would care."
"In terms of being naked, I'm not very prudish."
"When I won the competition, I had just been offered a job as a designer in Düsseldorf, so that’s probably what I’d be doing now. It can be fascinating to consider how your life might have turned out, like in the movie Sliding Doors, but I’m too busy to look back."
"I think my business is about people making you feel self-conscious. All eyeballs are on you when you're a model, when you're on the runway or in front of the camera, you're always looked up and down and back up, so that comes with the territory. But at the end of the day I feel like my parents gave me a good solid foundation. I know who I am and there are things I wouldn't do. I wouldn't starve myself, I also never wanted to chop my hair off when people said I should do this and I should do that. And I always knew who I was and said they're going to book me like this or not book me. I don't want to be a role model because I'm just a person too, so I can have mistakes and some people don't like what I do. People always push this role model thing on you. I just want to be a good role model for my children."
"Because of my job, I learned to be confident a little earlier than most. People pick you apart when you're in the public eye - you're wearing the wrong shoes or you have ugly nail polish on or they're wondering if you got your boobs done - so you have to be a strong person right away."
"I've never gone on a diet to lose weight. I have taken a few things out of my diet, like pasta and white bread, which are not so necessary for the body. Right now I'm looking at apple strudel and brownies with whipped cream. Do I want to eat all that? Yes. I've been wanting it all day but I'm not going to do it. I'll have something else."
"I am not that person who walks in a room with my nose in the sky. I smile at people when I meet them, and I like photos of me when I'm smiling because they show my personality. I am always trying to have fun."
"My mom gave me a lot of advice. I would say the biggest advice is to always have fun. Treat people well, have respect for everybody and, therefore, you will be respected. Have fun in your life!"
"I learned from working in the fashion world that if I have a day when I feel slapped in the face, or if someone has been mean, I just have to get back up and it will be another day. I think about what I'm grateful for. I look at my kids and my husband and think, Wow, I'm a really lucky person."
"The ultimate beauty secret for a woman getting older is, Don't be too thin! When you are just muscle, you end up being gaunt in the face, and that makes you look older by 5 or 10 years. I don't think of getting older as looking better or worse; it's just different. You change, and that's OK. Life is about change. I don't have anxiety about it, so I'm not running to get Botox. Maybe that will change, but I don't think so. I feel comfortable in my skin and comfortable with aging, so I think it's OK that I get wrinkles."
"I never really have any major resolutions. I do try to be a good person, to be a good mom, to be a good wife, I don't really start the year off on January 1, 'Oh, I am now going to make a big change.' I try every day when I wake up to be good to the people around me."
"The trick is that you have to stay naked. You must be naked."
"A pair of black Louboutin's... and that's it!"
"If you pick something you actually enjoy doing, you have fun every day of your life."
"Ask me again when I'm 65, but I'm proud to be able to say, in this day and age, I haven't done anything. Everyone has a view of what's pretty and what's not pretty, and it just doesn't look pretty to me."
"I was too curvy and too busty and a little too short. And I was a little bit self-conscious about it. But I was by no means heavy, I just — well, you have hips and boobs, and that's it. Haute couture, you don't really see girls with big boobs. And I always wanted first to be a model. So I had to say, "OK, you're going to find other things to do in this industry, or it's maybe not my industry.""
"I think you just have to be comfortable in your skin. But, I'm a nudist in any case. I've never had a problem with my body and I don't really care what people think, so I have bottoms on and pretty much go topless, or also when we shoot - we did a lot of nude pictures today, too - it doesn't bother me in the slightest."
"Have fun—a smile is the most beautiful thing on a woman."
"Ich glaube ihm das, und ich bin davon überzeugt, dass er das ist."
"Fantasy is often better than reality [...] It’s much more inspiring not to go to places than to go."
"There is no marriage, yet, for human beings and animals… I never thought that I would fall in love like this with a cat."
"Yet, for all his much-vaunted preservation of his privacy, he has always been noticeably willing to wile away an afternoon or so with journalists, spilling out well-honed anecdotes about himself - but these, of course, help maintain the mask. There is a particular story of which he seems especially fond, having trotted it out virtually word for word in almost every interview he has given during his 40-year career: "When I was a child in Germany," he merrily begins, "my parents gave me six bicycles - six bicycles, because I was a very spoilt child, hein? - and none of the other children had any because it was after the war, you know? But I wouldn't share, no, no, no. But I would instead come to school every day on a different bicycle and the other children would be very jealous." Even the various assistants, administrators and acolytes who flutter around him are so well trained in the importance of this anecdote that I am told it within minutes of my arrival, before they nervously usher me in to meet the man himself: "You know, when Karl was young, his parents gave him six bicycles ...""
"That was his thing. He only ever wore black and white. Misogyny was also his thing, but they don’t want to talk about that."
"Rathenau advocated labor legislation as a first step toward more extensive change in society. [...] Rathenau’s program was not so dissimilar from that of a “New Deal” Democrat. Hayek apparently first read Rathenau when he was about seventeen."
"A number of great factories in the hands of rich capitalists, in which "slaves of work" drag out their miserable existence, is not, therefore, the goal of the development of the age of natural science, but a return to individual labour, or where the nature of things demands it, the carrying on of common workshops by unions of workmen, who will receive a sound basis only through the general extension of knowledge and civilization, and through the possibility of obtaining cheaper capital."
"Equally unfounded is the complaint that the study of science and the technical application of the forces of nature gives to mankind a thoroughly material direction, makes them proud of their knowledge and power, and alienates ideal endeavours. The deeper we penetrate into the harmonious action of natural forces regulated by eternal unalterable laws, and yet so thickly veiled from our complete comprehension, the more we feel on the contrary moved to humble modesty, the smaller appears to us the extent of our knowledge, the more active is our endeavour to draw more from the inexhaustible fountain of knowledge, and understanding, and the higher rises our admiration of the endless wisdom which ordains and penetrates the whole creation."
"It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had been presumably fleeing and were shot from behind."
"Dear commander of the Japanese army in Nanking, We appreciate that the artillerymen of your army didn't attack to the Safety Zone. And we hope to contact with you to make a plan to protect general Chinese citizens who are staying in the Safety Zone... We will be pleased to cooperate with you in anyway to protect general citizens in this city."
"Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital... Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls' College alone. You hear nothing but rape. get the normal city life going as soon as possible. In the latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. But even last night between 8 and 9 p.m. when five Occidental members of our staff and Committee toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances!"
"We are sorry to trouble you again but the sufferings and needs of the 200 000 civilians for whom we are trying to care make it urgent that we try to secure action from your military authorities to stop the present disorder"
"On August 25th I was advised that I would have to go to Berlin for a meeting of the Reichstag. The suddenness of such convocations is symptomatic of the role to which that assembly has been reduced. In the earlier days, matters were given serious study, they were reported on by committees, and a working session of the Reichstag was then convened. To-day things are different. Members are summoned from one day to the next to hear a declaration by Hitler. That is what is called ‘good theatre,’ the sole purpose being propaganda. The members play the part of walkers-on in cheap drama."
"In my opinion it would be possible to agree upon a kind of truce in order to gain time for negotiation. I am against war. A war will make Germany dependent on Russia for raw materials and Germany will thus forego her position as a world power."
"Hitler also says, ‘Whoever is not with me is a traitor and shall be treated as such.’"
"In order to have peace it will be necessary for Germany to respect her Constitution in every way. Non-observance of the Constitution amounts, after all, to anarchy. The allegiance sworn by the individual citizen is valid only if the leaders also act in accordance with their obligations."
"After the declaration of war several people, who took no trouble to conceal their lack of enthusiasm for the regime, came to see me in Switzerland. They said, ‘how that war is declared, everyone must rally behind Hitler, for he represents Germany.’ To all such attempts to make me reverse my decision I replied, ‘No; for this man will plunge the German people into disaster.’"
"I am accused of being a traitor. This accusation—remembering that in 1923 I, an unarmed man, not protected by ninety billion marks’ worth of armaments, organized the passive resistance in the regions occupied by the enemy, and thus save the Rhine and the Ruhr—is almost as grotesque as the fact that National Socialism has suddenly discarded its doctrines in order to hobnob with Communism."
"No court in Germany is competent to entertain an appeal against a measure taken by the sinister Gestapo, even when its affects personal liberty."
"Goering is like a child; he wants everything he sees. By having my property confiscated in the name of the Prussian state, he made sure that these paintings, engravings of the eighteenth century, and other objects of art, would not escape his grasp. For Goering is virtual sovereign of Prussia. All that is Prussian property is his."
"For my financial interest in the greatest metallurgical concern in Germany, the United Steel Works, instead of being transferred to the Reich, has been seized by Prussia. Goering may have certain ideas in this connection. Indeed, a large share ownership in these steel works might save the Hermann Goering Works from bankruptcy."
"Do not forget that you [Hitler] owe your rise not to a great revolutionary uprising but to the liberal order which you have sworn to sustain."
"The persecution of the Christian religion, taking the form of cruel measures against the priests and insults to the Churches, led me to protest in the early days, for instance when the police president of Düsseldorf issued a protest to Marshal Goering. It was in vain."
"When, on November 9th, 1938, the Jews were despoiled and martyrised in the most cowardly and brutal manner, and their temples razed to the ground throughout Germany, I also protested. To reinforce this protest, I resigned my office as state councillor. This, too, was in vain.’"
"Now you have compounded with Communism. Your propaganda ministry even dares to proclaim that the honest Germans, who voted for you as the opponent of Communism, are in essentials identical with the bloody revolutionaries who plunged Russian into misery and whom you yourself denounced as ‘vulgar blood-stained criminals.’"
"My disappointment dates almost from the very beginning of the Nazi regime. Hitler’s eviction of the conservative elements from the government, of which he was the head, gave me some cause for anxiety. But I was inhibited by the impression produced by the burning of the Reichstag. To-day I know that this crime was staged by the National Socialists themselves, in order to gain more power."
"One month later a trembling Reichstag, one hundred of whose members had been arrested and imprisoned, voted the law conferring full powers on the government, which law lies at the root of all the arbitrary acts committed by the regime since 1933. Thus began a series of revolutionary acts which theoretically observed the forms of legality, but were in fact based upon a crime and a lie."
"Hitler achieved power by engineering a political combination. The National Socialist government owes its being to no revolutionary event comparable to Mussolini’s march on Rome. Hitler swore before Field Marshal von Hindenburg a solemn oath to respect a constitution which guaranteed the rights of man and political freedom in Germany. The burning of the Reichstag is the criminal act by which he perjured himself and usurped the power to rule."
"The persecution of the Catholics was merely a beginning. From that date disorder, illegality, and arbitrariness were the main weapons in the National Socialist arsenal."
"The National Socialist government had fought Bolshevism on the inner and on the outer front. Anti-Communist pacts had been concluded with Italy, Japan, Hungary, and Spain. Hitler had preached the crusade against Bolshevik Russia as the enemy of the human race. And suddenly he had allied himself with the monster."
"What interested me primarily was the way in which economic life should be organised in the National Socialist state or—as I advocated—under a collaboration of the National Socialists and the German Nationalists. Here was a problem of great importance. For the question to be decided was whether industry and economic activity in general should be taken over by the state; or if not, what was to be the role of the state in relation to economic life."
"At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century the generally dominant idea, derived from Ricardo and Adam Smith, was that commerce must be entirely unfettered, and that free trade was fundamentally linked with economic life. But the Liberals have ‘emptied the baby with the bath,’ with the result that the state, in opposition to them, has assumed more and more control over the economic process and has even gone into business on its own account. In my opinion the results achieved by the state as business manager have, on the whole, been bad… The function of the state, however, is to administer; and administration is something wholly different from enterprise under business management."
"The National Socialists never had a real economic plan. Some of them were entirely reactionary; some of them advocated a corporative system; others represented the viewpoint of the extreme Left. In my opinion, Hitler failed because he thought it very clever to agree with everybody’s opinion… Hitler had an unprecedented opportunity, such as no man will ever again be offered so easily, to create something entirely new. However, besides the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about matters economic, he cannot even fully understand his economic advisers. . . His constant worry has ever been to keep himself in power. . . . He believes that he alone is a great man, and all others non-entities."
"What we witness to-day in German politics, as well as in German economy, is a manifestation of the Prussian spirit. It might be objected that Hitler is not a Prussian, but an Austrian. The only answer to this is that his entourage is entirely Prussian, and Prussian in the worst possible sense. Indeed, his entourage, which is always near him, consists mainly of corporals."
"Goering is an army man. He imagines that it is enough to give orders for industry to carry them out. If the industrialists declare that it is impossible, they are accused of sabotage. Soon Germany will not be any different from Bolshevik Russia; the heads of enterprises who do not fulfill the conditions which the ‘Plan’ prescribes will be accused of treason against the German people, and shot."
"Taken as a whole, these Nazi achievements are a farrago of economic absurdities. For seven years I had to struggle with all these ignorant and incapable men. It is a waste of time to discuss their stupid projects or refute their specious arguments. In fact, the Nazi regime has ruined German industry. All the above-mentioned experiments with artificial products will become useless as soon as international trade is restored. Then Germany will have on her hands immense plants which have swallowed billions of marks and there will be nothing to do but turn them over to the wreckers. Industries which no longer have enough money to follow technical progress and to keep their equipment up-to-date are in an unfavourable position compared with foreign competition, especially in America."
"With Adolf Hitler everything is propaganda. National Socialist Germany has evolved entirely new methods of propaganda, and has used them with great effect and with a profound knowledge of mass psychology."
"In those days of the distant past the National Socialists presented themselves to the public as the champions of virtue and disinterestedness. As soon as they held the power, they raised graft to the status of a state institution."
"Such are the people who to-day govern Germany. It is astonishing how they can afford the impudence of proclaiming themselves Socialists and of insulting, from amidst their corruption, the ‘western plutocracies,’ to use their phrase. The vast majority of the German people know nothing of these refined methods of growing rich at the expense of the common weal and the sweat of the working masses. Some day, when they learn how they were deceived and scorned by their leaders, their fury will be terrible."
"From the moment they seized power, the Nazi leaders professed the greatest contempt for the individual. A large number of German conservatives, ignorant of the facts and appalled by the burning of the Reichstag, assented to the incarceration of the political enemies of the regime without a trial. They may have regarded this measure as purely provisional and justified by the danger of civil war, and assumed that the National Socialists would soon reinstate legal procedure. They were mistaken. The concentration camps, better called torture camps, are, to this day, a state institution."
"The persecution of the Jews reached its height in the autumn of 1938 and aroused universal protest. Up to 1933 I had not attached much importance to the anti-Semitic brawls of the National Socialist party. The inhabitants of the Catholic provinces of the Rhine are not anti-Semitic. There may be regions in Germany where the slow-wittedness of the population has enabled the Jews to play an exaggerated role. This has never been the case in the Rhineland. We have always considered the Jew Heinrich Heine as one of our national poets. The Nazis may destroy Heine’s statue in his native city of Düsseldorf, but they will never be able to prevent people from singing ‘Die Lorelei’ on the boats that sail down the Rhine."
"The Jewish bankers saved German economy after the war. It was thanks to these Jews that medium and small enterprises were able to obtain from the American banks the necessary credits for their re-equipment."
"It is, above all, in its anti-Jewish campaign, that the party has officially given free rein to the base instincts which lie at the root of its so-called philosophy. The National Socialist government had the miserable privilege of encouraging and even ordering acts which are considered to be crimes by the whole civilised world. Foreigners who were in Germany at the time were appalled at these scenes of sadism and savagery; they saw the official incendiaries of the synagogues at work. In the capital of the Reich, in the centre of the town and in full view of the embassies, the Storm Troops and the younger Hitlerites, commanded by their chiefs, gutted and plundered dwellings and shops. In tolerating—indeed, actually organising—theft, arson, pillage, and even murder in the concentration camps, the National Socialist regime, especially in that autumn of 1938, revealed itself to the whole world as a government of gangsters."
"No, the Nazis’ aim was quite a different one. They wished to make German Protestantism a kind of state religion, after stripping it of all Christian principles. To delude the simple-minded, they called it ‘German Christianity.’"
"National Socialism is not a political system. Rather, it is intended to be a philosophy and a system of morals — a Weltanschauung—as the Nazis pretentiously call it."
"And here we find a National Socialist pedagogue who has been entrusted with the training of a so-called elite, proposing to develop, not individuals with intelligence and a sense of responsibility, but machines. The followers of Karl Marx have never preached any such materialism. The Nazis have set out to destroy the soul. A dictatorship has no use for personality. A nation of robots is easier to govern."
"The Nazis, who have no understanding of religious zeal, saw in this restlessness of the Catholic population a display of political hostility. They said that the Catholic Centre party, although it had been officially dissolved, was renewing intrigues against the National Socialists through an underground movement. Goering launched his proclamation against political Christianity. It was not religion that was under discussion, he disclosed. National Socialism is based on positive Christianity… At the same time the Gestapo was instructed to proceed rigorously against the young Catholics."
"At the present time the Catholic Church is the sole organised form of resistance to the spirit of National Socialism. It is the only adversary with whom the Nazis are obliged to reckon."
"National Socialism has attempted to falsify Nietzsche’s work and to represent this great German philosopher as a precursor of the Nazi racial doctrine and the ‘Blood and Soil’ theory. The truth is that Nietzsche found no greater object of scorn, in many of his works, than the inflated pan-Germanic mind."
"All these questions are questions of the future; but they are of the greatest importance for German economy. For the extreme regimentation of German industry under the National Socialists has completely ruined its factories through excessive exploitation."
"Rosenberg, the great ‘intellectual’ of National Socialism, is an importation from Russia. He has not a drop of German blood in his veins. To him and his disciples Germany owes the methods of the ‘leagues of the godless’—the methods of Bolshevik Russia."
"The true Germany, with its western traditions, must be separated from Prussia, which belongs to the east."
"Chances are that the warmer temperature in May could ‘dry out’ the infection rate, but next winter would see a new outbreak. So it comes down to winning time to have more people immune and to have a vaccine commercially available."
"Many people take appropriate action to prevent infection and thus the spreading of the virus. However some people are overreacting and are more scared than they should be — and others don’t seem to really care."
"Throughout my career, I have come to understand that in order to gain success within any professional venture, one must find the human element in everything. Within the world of medical research, biochemistry, and business, numbers and facts often lead the way. Often times, empathy doesn’t exist, and human connections aren’t at the forefront of the work day."
"Everyone tells me not to say the things I do. I'm very direct, very undiplomatic. Everyone tells me to stop talking about my hacker history, about my lifesytle, but I don't give a ****, I've just stayed the way I am. Over the past few years I realised that if I was to run a company or a fund, I needed to be the captain and not listen to anyone else. I needed to be the ruler of my world otherwise it was never going to work."
"[On his early history as a hacker] Every hack was a trophy. I had a big feeling of power because I was running the most important worldwide mailbox exchanging hacking information and I knew what was really going on."
"They're treating us like a Mafia, man! [...] It's unbelievable. It's only because they cannot extradite us to the US just for copyright violation. If they treat us as some sort of international criminal conspiracy, they can."
"[Defending his purchase of a rare signed copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf] I'm a [video game] Call of Duty player right ... It's all about World War II and how you play and I'm a big fan of that. I've bought memorabilia from Churchill, from Stalin, from Hitler."
"Well let me make it absolutely clear, I'm not buying into the Nazi ideology. I'm totally against what the Nazis did."
"I think in another 100 years that book will probably go up in value times 10."
"What the US Govt is doing reminds me of what I learned in school about Nazi Germany. Ironic, Hollywood is run by mostly Jewish entrepreneurs."
"[T]he obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload."
"From that moment, I did not cease to pray to God that by his grace it might one day be permitted to me to learn Greek."
"Minna showed me the greatest sympathy and entered into all my vast plans for the future. ... It was agreed between us that as soon as we were grown up we would marry, and then at once set to work to explore all the mysteries of Ankershagen; excavating ... the vast treasures hidden by Henning, then Henning’s sepulchre, and lastly Troy; nay we could imagine nothing pleasanter than to spend all our lives in digging for relics of the past."
"The Trojans were, therefore, an Aryan race, as is clear from the evidence of symbols engraved on terracotta discs. The nation which succeeded the Trojans was also long-lived as it occurs in every soil layer between a depth of 10 and 7 m. It was of Aryan origin for it featured numerous Aryan symbols; and I believe that I have demonstrated that several of these also belonged to our ancestors at a time when the Germans, Pelasgians, Hindus, Celts and Greeks all belonged to one nation and spoke a single language."