"Philanthropy means to steal wholesale, and give away retail."

Paul Lafargue Literature See all quotes by Paul Lafargue →

React to this quote

More by Paul Lafargue

“The blood of three oppressed races runs in my veins.”

“I am proudest of my Negro extraction.”

“Jehovah … gave his worshippers the supreme example of ideal laziness; after six days of work, he rests for all eternity.”

“When, in our civilized Europe, we would find a trace of the native beauty of man, we must go seek it in the nations where economic prejudices have not yet uprooted the hatred of work. … The Greeks in their era of greatness had only contempt for work: their slaves alone were permitted to labor: the free man knew only exercises for the body and mind. … The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Logically speaking, even the life of an actor has no preface. He begins, and that is all. And such beginning is usually obscure; but faintly remembered at the best. Art is a completion; not merely a h…"

— Bram Stoker

Literature1847–1912

#knowledge

"I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back."

— Leo Tolstoy

Literature1828–1910

#identity

"You know from the repeated declarations in the Law that the principal purpose of the whole Law was the removal and utter destruction of idolatry, and all that is connected therewith, even its name, an…"

— Maimonides

Religion1135–1204

#family