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Ernest Hemingway 501
American author and journalist 1899–1961Related quotes
“It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.”
Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 159 (1972 edition)
“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
“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.
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction..., p. 1 (1843).
Context: Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.
Chomsky on Religion (2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDG7ErY-k4&feature=related.
Quotes 2010s, 2010