proletariat quotes

   The true aristocracyand the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.

- Karen, Baroness pseudonym Isak Dinesen Blixen
  Out of  Africa, pt.5, ch.1.

[The] English proletariat is becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimatelyat the possession of a bourgeoisaristocracyand a bourgeoisproletariat as well as a bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.

- Friedrich Engels
  Letter to Karl Marx,7 Oct.

What I did that was new was to prove that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historical phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; and that dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

- Karl Heinrich Marx
In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Correspondence (1934).

In a country that is economically backward, the proletariat can take power earlier than in countries where capitalism is advanced.

- Leon originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein Trotsky
The Permanent Revolution.