# Quote — Karl Marx, The German Ideology

> Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present.

- Author: [Karl Marx](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx.md)
- Book: [The German Ideology](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Marx#The_German_Ideology_(1845-1846)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/where-speculation-ends

## More from this book

> It is in fact not the consciousness dominating life but the very life dominating consciousness.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/it-is-in-fact.md)

> Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/language-comes-into.md)

> Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/thus-while-the.md)

Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [work](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work.md)