Friedrich Engels Quotes

The country has undergone a profound social upheaval, the greatest the proletariat has ever known.

The anarchists, on behalf of the proletariat, therefore consider it necessary to show the proletariat that it will have to win a gigantic battle before it realizes its goals.

From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.

History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.

The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848.

Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent.

Because in Russia you were able to triumph with the help of a large class of poor peasants, you represent things in such a way, as if we in Western Europe are also going to have that help.

The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built.

The Russian revolution was to an unprecedented degree the cause of the proletariat of the whole world becoming more revolutionary.

Every class struggle is a political struggle

To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists or landlords form an integral part. ORGANIZE, that a solid, compact and intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of action for the revolutionary forces of the future.

In most revolutions, where events are drawn out, particularly after the initial flush of victory, the masses can feel the gains of the revolution slipping from their hands. The advanced sections of the proletariat, realizing the dangerous situation, begin to become impatient and attempt to recapture the initiative

When the proletariat is not organized enough to conduct a successful struggle against the political power of the ruling class, it must be trained for such a purpose by steady and hostile instigation.

Revolution is the duty of the worker and the peasant masses and not of just a few heroes, hence the necessity to organize these masses and draw them into the struggle.

A bourgeois revolution is always a revolution of a minority against the majority. The proletarian revolution which aims at being truly Communist, must be a revolution of the majority against the minority

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight...

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

We live in a world today where the capitalists' confidence in their ability to rule has been shaken.

We are here to announce class warfare, in peace and for democracy.

Now we are proud that the government has moved from the class of the exploiters to the class of the people who were being exploited. And in the great name of the same class, I raise this nation's flag which is a strong symbol of this transfer.

Communism … is not a stale state …. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.

Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.

Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.

When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.

The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without violent revolution.