Much of what I have to say for my case may sound wonderful, because it runs counter to the popular prejudice, but the only witness required to prove … - Joseph Dietzgen

My logic deserves its proletarian qualification for the reason that it requires for its understanding the overcoming of all prejudices by which the capitalist world is held together.

The materialist theory of knowledge amounts, then, to this statement, that the human organ of cognition radiates no metaphysical light, but is a piece of Nature which pictures other pieces of Nature whose essence is explained when we describe it and bring it in connection with the whole Universe as the one Reality and the real Unity. Such a description demands from the epistemologist or philosopher that he should treat his subject in the same precise way as the animal world is treated by the zoologist. Should I be reproached with not following this precept immediately, I would point to Rome which, too, was not built in one day.

Anything which may take possession of one’s soul shares its sublimity with all other things, and is for this reason at the same time something ordinary. Without such a dialectic clarification of our consciousness all adoration is idol worship.