Real talers have the same existence that the imagined gods have. Has a real taler any existence except in the imagination, if only in the general or rather common imagination of man? Bring paper money into a country where this use of paper is unknown, and everyone will laugh at your subjective imagination.

Marx, Doctoral Thesis, Appendix (1841)

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

Marx, Doctoral Thesis, Chapter 1 (1841)

What is genuine is proved in the fire, what is false we shall not miss in our ranks. The opponents must grant us that youth has never before flocked to our colours in such numbers, ... in the end, one will be found among us who will prove that the sword of enthusiasm is just as good as the sword of genius.

Engels, Anti-Schelling (1841)

The representation of private interests ... abolishes all natural and spiritual distinctions by enthroning in their stead the immoral, irrational and soulless abstraction of a particular material object and a particular consciousness which is slavishly subordinated to this object.

Marx, On the Thefts of Wood, in Rheinische Zeitung (1842)

In the year 1842-43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. ... the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions. ... When the publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung conceived the illusion that by a more compliant policy on the part of the paper it might be possible to secure the abrogation of the death sentence passed upon it, I eagerly grasped the opportunity to withdraw from the public stage to my study.

Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)

Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.

Engels, Outlines of Political Economy (1844)

The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

The bureaucrat has the world as a mere object of his action.

Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

This is a kind of mutual reconciliation society... Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  Actual extremes cannot be mediated with each other precisely because they are actual extremes. But neither are they in need of mediation, because they are opposed in essence.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)