Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.

The values of commodities are directly as the times of labor employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labor employed.

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.