"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. ...

"“atheism” ... reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man."

Marx, Letter to Arnold Ruge (30 November 1842)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1842/letters/42_11_30.htm

"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

"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

"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)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/ch01.htm

"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

"As Prometheus, having stolen fire from heaven, begins to build houses and to settle upon the earth, so philosophy, expanded to be the whole world, turns against the world of appearance. The same now with the philosophy of Hegel."

Marx, Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy

"History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy."

Marx, Reflections of a Young Man

"If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly