“It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake…”

“It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.”

— Karl Marx

Verification

Attributed

Recorded by a reliable secondary source; exact wording may differ.

Imported from Wikiquote; not yet checked by QuoteQuest against the original source.

Source

Title: Wikiquote: Karl Marx
Type: reference · Secondary source
Held by: Wikiquote

View source at Wikiquote

Context

Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (25 January 1843), after the Prussian government dissolved the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, of which Marx was the editor.

Cite this source

Marx, Karl. (n.d.). Wikiquote: Karl Marx. Wikiquote. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

Check citations against your institution's style guide; some details may be missing.

Provenance: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA)