Louis Althusser Quotes

[Referring to Karl Marx:] ... the prince of muddleheads.

Marxism does not make sense, and I am the first one to say this

I am not sure just what Marx had in mind when he wrote that "philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Did he mean that philosophy could change the world, or that philosophers should turn to the higher priority of changing the world? If the former, then he presumably meant philosophy in a broad sense of the term, including analysis of the social order and ideas about why it should be changed, and how. In that broad sense, philosophy can play a role, indeed an essential role, in changing the world.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

Of course, Marxism is an example of what Carl Popper would have called a 'World Three' structure, in that it's got immense power as an idea, but you couldn't actually hold up anything in the world and say: 'this is Marxism'.

Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist.

Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind.

Our judgment and moral categories, our idea of the future, our opinions about the present or about justice, peace, or war, everything, without excluding our rejections of Marxism, is impregnated with Marxism.

Karl Marx is not a very popular figure any more but once in a while he said something very sensible.

Marxist ideology is wrong, but I have known many good people who are Marxists.

Dialectical materialism works like cocaine, let's say. If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man.

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist

I would define myself as a Marxian, and that means of course also as a humanist.

Marxism is not scientific: at the best, it has scientific prejudices.

I'm less influenced by any of [Karl] Marx's ideas today than I've ever been in my life, and most significantly Marx's theory of historical materialism, which I think is virtually a debris of despotism.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.

Communists are great capitalists, so there is no threat anymore.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

My favourite author is Leon Trotsky - the political philosophy and the way he writes is beautiful, and really relevant, too.

Marx and Engels are arguably history's most famous couple. Such was the closeness of their collaboration that it is not always easy to recall which works bore both names, which just that of Marx, and which just Engels.

Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

I was the true future. I understood Communism better than they did.

Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're still-born.