“For the man who studies to gain insight, books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder on which he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a rung has raised him one step, he leaves it behind.”

—Schopenhauer


In a dispute by correspondence with a young admirer of his named Kugelmann, Marx explains the application of the dialectic to current events. It was 1870 and Kugelmann could not see why Germany should turn her defensive war against France into an aggressive and imperialistic war. Marx replies that the dialectic consists not only in opposing another force but in overcoming it and so fusing the two elements. Then he writes to Engels: “When a man attacks me on the street, according to K., I have only the right to ward off his blows; to strike him in return and knock him down would be, according to him, to become an aggressor. It is clear none of these fellows understand anything about the dialectic.”

—from Darwin, Marx, Wagner by Jacques Barzun


“I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go.”

—Anaïs Nin


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