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.

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.