A Quote by Karl Marx

Religion is the opiate of the people.

Karl Marx

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Karl Marx
German - Philosopher
May 5, 1818 - March 14, 1883

Truth as a cultural ideal has functioned as an opiate, perhaps the only serious opiate of the modern world. Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses. Raymond Aron retorted that Marxist ideas were in turn the opiate of the intellectuals. There is perspicacity in both these polemical thrusts. But is perspicacity truth? I wish to suggest that perhaps truth has been the real opiate, of both the masses and the intellectuals.

Immanuel Wallerstein

Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people.

Thomas Szasz

Religion is the opium of the people translated from the German Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkessometimes misquoted as opiate of the people.

Karl Marx

Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium suggests something soporific, numbing, dulling. Too often religion has been an aphrodisiac for horror, a Benzedrine for bestiality. At its best it has lifted spirits and raised spires. At its worst it has turned entire civilizations into cemeteries.

Phillip Adams

In 1844, Karl Marx said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." He said this at a time when opium and opium derivatives were the only painkillers. And he said it helped a little. He might as well have said, "Religion is the aspirin of the people."

Kurt Vonnegut

Tobacco is the opiate of the gentleman, the religion of the rich.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Marx was wrong--religion is not the opiate of the masses, baseball is.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

We also know that religion, as the Marxists have always insisted, has, too often, like an opiate, tended to put people to sleep to the reality and the need for the present struggle for peace and justice.

Dorothy Day

If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.

Zadie Smith

The insanity of consumption bothers me. Talk about the opiate of the masses. It ain't religion anymore. It's stuff.

Emma Thompson

Marx called religion an opiate, and all too often it is. But philosophy is an anaesthetic, a shot to keep the wonder away.

N.D. Wilson

You know how they say that religion is the opiate of the masses? Well I took masses of opiates religiously.

Carrie Fisher

Calvin:"It says here that 'religion is the opiate of the masses.'...what do you suppose that means?" Television: "...it means that Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet

Bill Watterson

Communism is the opiate of the people.

Will Durant

Television in its present form...[is] the opiate of the people of the United States.

Richard M. Nixon

Religion is now the first obstacle to women's advancement. Religion pulls human beings backwards, it goes against science and progressiveness. Religion engulfs people with a fear of the supernatural. It bars people from laughing and never allows people to exercise their choice.

Taslima Nasrin

A Quote by Karl Marx

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