I Am Nothing But I Must Be

[the Career A Young Man Should Choose Should Be] One That Is Most Consonant With Our Dignity, One That Is Based On Ideas Of Whose Truth We Are Wholly Convinced, One That Offers Us Largest Scope In Working For Humanity And Approaching That General Goal Towards Which Each Profession Offers Only One Of The Means: The Goal Of Perfection ... If He Works Only For Himself He Can Become A Famous Scholar, A Great Sage, An Excellent Imaginative Writer [ Dichter ], But Never A Perfected, A Truly Great Man.

All That We Want To Do Away With Is The Miserable Character Of This Appropriation, Under Which The Labourer Lives Merely To Increase Capital , And Allowed To Live Only So Far As The Interest To The Ruling Class Requires It.

The Way People Get Their Living Determines Their Social Outlook.

A Commodity Has A Value Because It Is A Crystallization Of Social Labor. The Greatness Of Its Value, Or Its Relative Value, Depends Upon The Greater Or Less Amount Of That Social Substance Contained In It; That Is To Say, On The Relative Mass Of Labor Necessary For Its Production.

The Ideas Of The Ruling Class Are In Every Epoch The Ruling Ideas, I.e. The Class Which Is The Ruling Material Force Of Society, Is At The Same Time Its Ruling Intellectual Force. The Class Which Has The Means Of Material Production At Its Disposal, Has Control At The Same Time Over The Means Of Mental Production, So That Thereby, Generally Speaking, The Ideas Of Those Who Lack The Means Of Mental Production Are Subject To It. The Ruling Ideas Are Nothing More Than The Ideal Expression Of The Dominant Material Relationships, The Dominant Material Relationships Grasped As Ideas.