Friedrich Engels Quotes

When mankind first saw the necessity of government, it is probable that many had conceived the desire of ruling.

Every class struggle is a political struggle

Rulers come and go; governments end and forms of government change; but sovereignty survives.

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

There is a buffet of ideologies for me to choose from. I've been a fan of certain communist and socialist ideals. Some have failed, some have succeeded. I've lived long enough to understand where all they failed.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

The State is said by some to be a necessary evil; it must be made unnecessary.

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.

So many able writers have shown that the unjust institutions which work so much misery and suffering to the masses have their root in governments, and owe their whole existence to the power derived from government we cannot help but believe that were every law, every title deed, every court, and every police officer or soldier abolished tomorrow with one sweep, we would be better off than now.

As an anarchist, I cannot reconcile myself to any government.

If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion.

Karl Marx predicted the eventual withering away of the state and the 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' when the people would rule, which was sheer fantasy because it was sheer fantasy because it was based on grossly erroneous assumptions about human nature, as history would repeatedly demonstrate.

The next stage of development, perhaps in the distant future, will be a social order under which there will be no need for the coercive power of the state.

Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a movement (which has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word "anarchy" was used universally in the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth.

I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind.

You can't build politics on love. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.

I think that people who believe in limited government would benefit greatly by studying the logic in government itself and the role of power as a corruptive mechanism in leading finally to unlimited government.

You may not think about politics, but politics think about you.

What we were striving for was a kind of modified form of communism.

Miss Goldman is a Communist; I am an Individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property, I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should.

Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State.

A people may let a king fall, yet still remain a people, but if a king let his people slip from him, he is no longer a king.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.