“Why Opium produces sleep: … Because there is in it a dormitive power.”
Le Malade Imaginaire (1673), Act III, sc. iii
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Molière72
French playwright and actor 1622–1673Related quotes
“The sleep of reason produces monsters.”
Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)
1790s
Hunter S. Thompson book Kingdom of Fear
2000s, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century (2004)
Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor
On his childhood. p. 40
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)
Gideon Defoe (1975) British writer
Source: The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists
“Charity… is the opium of the privileged.”
Chinua Achebe book Anthills of the Savannah
Source: Anthills of the Savannah
“Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.”
Edmund Wilson book Memoirs of Hecate County
Memoirs of Hecate County (1946) [New York Review Books Classics, 2004], Ch. 5, p. 340
Karl Marx, in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843-4), wrote "Religion…is the opium of the people" ("Die Religion…ist das Opium des Volkes"). Wilson was not the first writer to turn Marx’s statement on its head: Evelyn Waugh published a review of Harold Laski's Faith, Reason and Civilization in The Tablet, 22nd April 1944, under the headline "Marxism, the Opiate of the People".
In 1955 the French philosopher Raymond Aron wrote a book on Marxism called L'Opium des intellectuels. Hence Wilson's line is often attributed to him.
“The reason why fear is so powerful is because you believe it to be stronger than you.”
Steve Maraboli (1975)
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 36