Engels’s classic quotations on marriage include:
1. Full freedom of marriage can only be achieved by eliminating capitalist production and the property relations it creates, thus changing today’s choice of spouse. It can only be realized universally after all additional economic considerations that have a huge impact are eliminated. Then there will be no other motive than mutual admiration.
2. People have the freedom to get married, and they should also have the freedom to divorce.
3. If only a marriage based on love is ethical, then only a marriage that continues to maintain love will be ethical.
4. If the relationship has indeed disappeared, or has been squeezed out by new and passionate love, it will make divorce a blessing for the other party and society.
5. Marriage, those ceremonies approved by the state and held in churches are redundant and unnecessary.
6. Marriage is determined by the class status of the parties involved, so it is always a marriage that weighs the pros and cons. This kind of marriage weighing interests often turns into the most vulgar selling in both situations, sometimes for both parties, but most often for the wife.
7. The situation of equal legal rights for men and women after marriage is not necessarily better. The legal inequality between the sexes that we have inherited from past social relations is not the cause of women's economic oppression, but its consequence. In the ancient feudal household economy, which included many couples and their children, housework entrusted to women was a fair and socially necessary undertaking, just as food was obtained by men.
8. Marriage was created to make it easier for men to exploit and enslave women.
9. The form of marriage is a dual system that is gradually approaching monogamy. This was not strictly monogamous, as polygamy was also allowed for prominent figures.
10. The essence of marriage is to ensure that every man has his own slave.