The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles. – Karl Marx
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. – Karl Marx
The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. – Karl Marx
On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects. – Karl Marx
The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master. – Henry James