“Charity… is the opium of the privileged.”
Source: Anthills of the Savannah
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Chinua Achebe 63
Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic 1930–2013Related quotes
“Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.”
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.
“It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.”
Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 159 (1972 edition)
“The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.”
1930s
“Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.”
Byron
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888)
“If religion was the opium of the masses, then communism was the methamphetamine of the masses.”
Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GPAl_q2QQ
Biblical Lectures