Religion The Opiate Quotes & Sayings

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

Religions are metaphorical systems that give us bigger containers in which to hold our lives. A spiritual life allows us to move beyond the ego into something more universal. Religious experience carries us outside of clock time into eternal time. We open ourselves into something more complete and beautiful. This bigger vista is perhaps the most magnificent aspect of a religious experience.
There is a sense in which Karl Marx was correct when he said that religion is the opiate of the people. However, he was wrong to scoff at this. Religion can give us skills for climbing up on onto a ledge above our suffering and looking down at it with a kind and open mind. This helps us calm down and connect to all of the world's sufferers. Since the beginning of human time, we have yearned for peace in the face of death, loss, anger and fear. In fact, it is often trauma that turns us toward the sacred, and it is the sacred that saves us. — Mary Pipher

Sexual religion is the opiate of the supermenial. — Germaine Greer

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

I frowned at him. "Isn't sarcasm the opiate of the masses?"
"You're thinking of religion," he replied. "Sarcasm is the Xanax of the morally bereft. — Cecily White

Gender, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. — Erving Goffman

Don't worry..we all have our blips. See, we all go through it, now it's your turn. It's only fair — Cecelia Ahern

I am telling you that if things can change for the worse, the opposite is also true. But only if you open yourself to the possibilities. — Ruth Reichl

If religion, she also liked to say, is the opiate of the masses, fundamentalism is the amphetamine. — C.D. Wright

In his early text, somewhat cumbersomely titled 'Towards a Critique of Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT,' the young Karl Marx famously noted that religion - the Christian faith, he meant primarily - is 'the opiate of the people.' It's a drug, and it's a 'downer' or 'depressant' insulating people from the pain of oppressive social realities and consoling them with a dream world of heavenly bliss. Alternatively, religion can function as an 'upper,' a 'stimulant' energizing people for the tasks at hand - a function of religion Marx failed to grasp. — Miroslav Volf

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

Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously. — Carrie Fisher

For centuries the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce God as a hallucination - a delusional crutch for those too weak to accept that life is meaningless. I could not stand by while science presumed to harness the power of God himself! Proof, you say? Yes, proof of science's ignorance! What is wrong with the admission that something exists beyond our understanding? The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith! — Dan Brown

Stein resented the sedative power of religion, or rather the repose available to those blissfully ignorant that the medicament was a fictitious blank. In this exile from peace of mind to which his reason doomed him, he was like an insomniac driven to awaken sleepers from dreams illegitimately won by going around shouting, 'Don't you realize it was a placebo!' Thus it seemed to me that what you were up against in Stein was not logic rampant, but frustrated faith. He could not forgive God for not existing. — Peter De Vries

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

And the story is told that a young woman taking an examination for a Communist party post was unsure of the answer to a question asking the inscription on a certain monument. She wrote the words of Marx quoted above and when the examination was over hurried to the monument to check. Reading the inscription "Religion is the opiate of the people," she fell to her knees, saying, "Thank God. — Roberson

Organized religion is the frozen thought of man, out of which he builds temples and churches; it has become a solace for the fearful, an opiate for those who are in sorrow. But God or truth is far beyond thought and emotional demands. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

Karl Marx is irrelevant to many millions of them because, in America, religion is the poetry of the people and not their opiate. — Harold Bloom

The National Socialist state refuses to admit female labour in factories merely because such labour is cheap. There is, of course, a certain amount of industrial work which can only be performed by women, but an essential condition is that this sort of work should not be injurious to health. — Adolf Hitler

Religion is the opiate of the people! — Philip Roth

People, even crazy, evil people, tended to believe they have a good reason for doing what they do. Though some consider religion the opiate of the masses, others use it to further their obsessions, or rationalize their crimes. — J.A. Konrath

Be kind to one another. Bye, bye. — Ellen DeGeneres

I've known Larry Clark since I was fourteen. I've always skateboarded in Manhattan. Larry got into the scene in the early '90s, taking pictures and skating with us. — Leo Fitzpatrick

If only religion were an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast. — Christopher Hitchens

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

Christ cared enough for sinners to die for them. Do we care enough for sinners to live to reach them? — Leonard Ravenhill

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

Tobacco is the opiate of the gentleman, the religion of the rich. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

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

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

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

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

Karl Marx famously called religion 'the opiate of the masses.' Buddhism, — John Green