“Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.”
On German fascism, in "An Appeal to Reason" ["Deutsche Ansprache. Ein Appell an die Vernunft"] in Berliner Tageblatt (18 October 1930); as translated by Helen T. Lowe-Porter in Order of the Day, Political Essays and Speeches of Two Decades (1942), p. 57
Context: This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.
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Thomas Mann 159
German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate 1875–1955Related quotes
“"Religion is the opiate of the masses.""I did masses of opiates religiously.”
Source: Postcards from the Edge
“In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.”
"The Muscular Opiate," The New York Times (1967-10-03)
Source: Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995: An Exhibition Catalogue
“Marx was wrong--religion is not the opiate of the masses, baseball is.”
Quoted without citation by Nathaniel J. Ehrlich, Psychology and contemporary affairs, p. 78 (1972)
Attributed
“A single face turned upward toward all Time
One flesh, one ecstasy, one peace.”
Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV. Homeward Bound, Lines 465–467; the murder of Absyrtus.
Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 7
“[On the newspapers of the Craw Press:] Their politics are an opiate to prevent folk thinking.”
Source: Castle Gay (1930), Ch. 3