Opium Of The People Quotes

The opium of the people in the present world is perhaps not so much religion as it is accepted boredom. Such a world is at the mercy, it must be known, of those who provide at least the semblance of an escape from boredom. Human life aspires to the passions, and again encounters its exigencies. ~ Georges Bataille

Religion is no longer the opium of the people but the vitamin pills of the feeble. ~ Regis Debray

Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium. ~ Gideon Defoe

It is quite true that Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. But of course we now know that Marxism is the crack cocaine of the people. ~ Douglas Wilson

I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who - in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people" - cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human morals and human aims. ~ Albert Einstein

Optimism is the opium of the people. ~ Milan Kundera

Lenin did not write as eloquently about religion as Marx, nor did he write about it often. He wielded Marx's 'opium of the people' from time to time, but his own metaphor was alcoholic. In his 1905 essay, 'Socialism and Religion,' he wrote of 'the distribution of state-clerical gin' in which 'slaves of capital drown their human shape and their claims to any decent life.' His alternative metaphor suggests a shift from thinking of religion as anesthesia to thinking of it - much as Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov did - as a vice. ~ Roland Elliott Brown

The film drama is the opium of the people ... down with bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios ... long live life as it is! ~ Dziga Vertov

The real "opium of the people", distracting men's minds from their essential task, is the communist myth of an earthly paradise. ~ Jean Danielou

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people. ~ Simone Weil

[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey. ~ Terry Eagleton

Love, my dear, is the opium of the masses, and once people get high on it, they will trample you like wild horses. ~ Yanko Tsvetkov

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

THE GAMBLER,THE NUN & THE RADIO

Yes, and music is the opium of the people. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Marx is only half right when he calls religion the opium of the people. It may turn a lot of people into sheep, but it turns far too many of them into tigers. ~ Hugh MacLennan

My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."

"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh Holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"

"Arturo, stop that"

"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family."

My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame."

I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"

My mother came after me with the broom. ~ John Fante

Religion isn't the opium of the people, it's the hypocrisy. ~ Miguel El Portugues

Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people. ~ John Desmond Bernal

Vedanta is the teaching of the Upanishads, a collection of dialogues, stories, and poems, some of which go back to at least 800 B.C. Sophisticated Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is "underneath" rather than "above" everything, and he (or it) plays the world from inside. One might say that if religion is the opium of the people, the Hindus have the inside dope. What is more, no Hindu can realize that he is God in disguise without seeing at the same time that this is true of everyone and everything else. In the Vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except God. There seem to be other things than God, but only because he is dreaming them up and making them his disguises to play hide-and-seek with himself. ~ Alan W. Watts

Religion is the opium of the people. He believed that, that dyspeptic little joint-keeper. Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount-to-the-head hadn't thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had just been using. Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government, always less government. Liberty, what we believed in, now the name of a MacFadden publication. We believed in that although they had not found a new name for it yet. But what was the real one? What was the real, the actual, opium of the people? He knew it very well. It was gone just a little way around the corner in that well-lighted part of his mind that was there after two or more drinks in the evening; that he knew was there (it was not really there of course). What was it? He knew very well. What was it? Of course; bread was the opium of the people. Would he remember that and would it make sense in the daylight? Bread is the opium of the people. ~ Ernest Hemingway

God wants to save us in a people. He does not want to save us in isolation. And so today's church more than ever is accentuating the idea of being a people. The church therefore experiences conflicts, because it does not want a mass; it wants a people. A mass is a heap of persons, the drowsier the better, the more compliant the better. The church rejects communism's slander that it is the opium of the people. It has no intention of being the people's opium. Those that create drowsy masses are others. The church wants to rouse men and women to the true meaning of being a people. What is a people? A people is a community of persons where all cooperate for the common good. ~ Oscar A. Romero

History, having destroyed the religion as the opium of the people, now requires that they be given a taste of the real stuff. ~ Auberon Waugh

'Born Free' was the first film I ever saw. I just fell in love with the idea of people having that bond with a wild animal. ~ Martin Clunes

Everyone has got their own ideas and they push them and say to hell with everyone else. That's the history of the human race. It got us on top, only now it is pushing us off. The thing is that people will put up with any kind of discomfort, and dying babies, and old age at thirty as long as it has always been that way. Try to get them to change and they fight you, even while they're dying, saying it was good enough for grandpa so it's good enough for me. Bango, dead. ~ Harry Harrison

I think I love my people more than normal people love their people. My love is so overwhelming and terrifying and uncomfortable and complicated that I need to hide from it. Life and love simply ask too much of me. Everything hurts. I don't know how peple can just let it all hurt so much. I am just not up for all this hurting. I have to do whatever it takes not to feel the hurt. But what i have to do to avoid the hurt for myself hurts everyone else. My survival means I have to keep harming my people. But it is not because I don't love them, it is because I love them too much. All I can say is "I do love you," but it sounds weak, like a like, and their faces don't soften when they hear it. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

Justin frowned. "Do I have to stay in the nursery? With the the babies?"
"Darling, you're four years old - "
"Almost five!"
Phoebe's lips quirked. There was a wealth of interest and empathy in the gaze she bent on her small son. "You may stay in my room, if you like," she offered.
The child was appalled by the suggestion.
"I can't sleep in your room," he said indignantly.
"Why not?"
"People might think we were married!"
West concentrated on a distant spot on the floor, struggling hold back a laugh. When he was able, he took a steadying breath and risked a glance at Lady Clare. To his secret delight, she appeared to be considering the point as if it were entirely valid. ~ Lisa Kleypas

It was true what people said, that when one became old (and how sneakily that happened, how sly time was), memories of the long-ago past, repressed for decades, were suddenly bright and clear. A ~ Kate Morton

What this means is not a single Tower of Babel plotted in common, but hundreds of thousands of separate beginnings, the length and breadth of America. Energetic people who build against pains and uncertainties, as weaker ones merely hope against them. ~ Saul Bellow

I think that fear of the mob, the expectation that people, particularly poor and nonwhite people become mobs almost automatically in the absence of coercive authority, is inculcated by the media, the movies, and politicians. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Well, when I think of steroids I think of an image. You have the advantage over someone, which is a form of cheating. I guess it wouldn't be right unless it was legal for everybody. Reason it's not legal for everybody is because it can hurt people seriously. ~ Evander Holyfield

A lot of people go to the movies wanting the movie to be about feelings, and it's really not about that. Or rather it's about feelings in the abstract. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Make yourself a simpleton and follow the saint: You will find salvation only by being a simpleton. Hence, oh father, that king of men, the Prophet said, 'Most of the people of Paradise are simpletons.' Since cleverness is your pride, become a simpleton so that your heart may remain healthy. Not a simpleton warped by buffoonery, but one distraught and bewildered in God ~ Rumi

So often, trans roles don't even go to trans actors. Most of the fabulous trans roles that have won people Oscars, we didn't get to play. A lot of folks have said we're not trained enough and that we're not prepared to do whatever. ~ Laverne Cox

How little we know, I thought, of the people we live amongst. ~ Geraldine Brooks

I live what most people call the good life. I was happy, but deep inside I always felt that, with the short amount of time we are given to live and love in this world, we spend too much time loving things instead of people. ~ Mother Antonia

People ask if I can get it up in the morning. I tell them are you kidding I'm envious of a stiff wind. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

Power is the ability to control people or things. So, unless you learn to control your own self first, how would you be able to influence anybody else? Now, doesn't that apply to all of us? ~ Pulkit Patel

One of the best ways to cultivate a possibility mind set is to prompt yourself to dream one size bigger than you normally do. Let's face it, most people dream too small, they don't think big enough. ~ John C. Maxwell

The violence that we had in the 60's was limited. The next time it will be unlimited because the violence in the 60's was a struggle for human dignity and for human rights. The next struggle will be a struggle for survival and it will not just be limited to Black people or Black against white, but it will be the poor people, the masses of the people of the country, struggling for the right to live or the right to survive. ~ Robert F. Williams

the need to create is a drive that lies deep within each of us. We all strive to build empires, whether of stone or people or words. Empires we hope will survive us. In the end, though, each of us must necessarily leave our creations behind. All we can hope for is to also leave behind a worthy successor to continue our work. Or who can at least maintain it for a season. ~ Timothy Zahn

Be afraid of the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese shoot down satellites in space; they hack into Google's computers; the Osama bin Laden people can't make their underwear blow up. ~ Francis Fukuyama

Every business is about understanding people. Which people you have to get through. Which people you have to embrace. Which people you have to jump over. Which people you have to push out of the way. That's the game. ~ Donny Deutsch

It has, therefore, been a favorite boast of the people of Wales and Cornwall, that the original British stock flourishes in its unmixed purity only among them. ~ Thomas Bulfinch

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night. ~ Khaled Hosseini

We can reproduce within our own minds the way that the world is put together for other people. This is the extraordinary privilege and adventure of anthropology. ~ Marshall Sahlins

What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era. ~ Harold Bloom

Look for smart ways around a problem or faster ways to resolve them. Make effective use of the people around you instead of assuming you have to do everything yourself. ~ Scott Berkun

One-third of the planet's population, over two billion people, has never heard the gospel. And of that number, over 50,000 die daily, separated from God forever. ~ David Sills

What the economy requires now is a whole different set of skills: You need intelligence, you need an ability to sit still and focus, to communicate openly to be able to listen to people and to operate in a workplace that is much more fluid than it used to be. Those are things that women do extremely well. ~ Hanna Rosin

I definitely think it [the key to maintain success] is a number of things. It's having the right people behind you. It's having the right work ethic. It's having the right mind-set. And it's also a little bit of luck. ~ Jordin Sparks

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people. ~ Thomas Jefferson

[Marco Rubio] a total non-show senator. I mean, he was elected - he defrauded the people of Florida. He was elected to be a senator. He was elected to go and vote on important matters, and he's all over the country. He's not voting. I mean, he's not voting. ~ Donald Trump

Some people don't understand that but it's nice when it really just gets to the point then that it [music] doesn't get played so much that you're overdoing a lot of things; that it's fresh ideas. And they come out fresh and if you're already in the mode, I guess, to simplify some things so that it comes across better on record, it's the right time to be tasteful with somethin'. ~ Stevie Ray Vaughan

What teenagers are ready to laugh at is the misery of other people. ~ Jordan Peele

People ask me, "Why don't you call in the blind?" I ask them, "Would you call with Phil Robertson in your blind?"
It's like pinch-hitting for Albert Pujols. It doesn't make sense when you have the best duck caller in the world in your blind. The benefits of not screwing up are better than those of taking a chance on doing something stupid. Believe me: if you mess up, you're going to hear about it. I never will forget when we had about twenty-five mallards almost in the hole. They were on their third pass down when the text message alert on my phone went off. After my phone buzzed, the mallards decided not to come in. Phil looked down the row of guys with a look that was a mixture of craziness, agony, and Satan himself.
"What was that?" he hollered.
Now, there was no way I was gonna fess up.
"I heard something!" Phil yelled again.
I didn't feel like trying to explain to him that there was no way the ducks heard my phone from sixty yards away, so I didn't say a word. I'm glad waterboarding isn't allowed in the blind, because ol' Phil would have filled our faces with water to find the culprit. There is always a lot of pressure to have 100 percent success. If we get four out of six ducks, we'll sit there and debate for the next two hours why we didn't get all six. ~ Willie Robertson

Many of us think of people who lobby for pure water and pure food as food faddists or health nuts. We call a section in our local supermarket the "Health Food Section." What is the rest of the store called, the "Death and Disease Section"? ~ Carol N. Simontacchi

I think the mistake people make with horror movies and what makes them successful is a lot of horror movies get made by people who don't really like them, so they don't respect them. And when you like horror and have admiration for it, that community knows that what's important for a horror movie is important for every other kind of movie. ~ Jason Blum

Multiculturalism helps immigrants postpone the pain of letting go of the anachronistic and inappropriate. It locks people into corrupt, inefficient, and unjust social systems, even if it does preserve their arts and crafts. It perpetuates poverty, misery, and abuse. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

[She] had the indefinable charm of someone who said little but thought much. Miss Prim had always felt that such people were at a marked advantage. They never said anything tactless, never spouted nonsense, never had cause to regret their words or justify themselves. ~ Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands ... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and ... provide for their own safety and security. ~ John Locke

We're trained to see the world in terms of charismatic organizations and charismatic people. That's who we look to for leadership and change, for transformation. We're awaiting the next J.F.K., the next Martin Luther King, the next Gandhi, the next Nelson Mandela. ~ Paul Hawken

Guy suddenly wanted to scald his face, gain fifty pounds, shear his hair. He was sick of his beauty, his "eternal" beauty. People thought he was purer, more intelligent, kinder, nobler than he was because they ascribed all these virtues to him. What if he were stripped of his looks, if he stabbed the grotesque painting in the attic? If they saw him for what he really was – empty-headed, vicieux (how did you translate that? "Riddled with vices?"), narcisse? Used to being indulged and pursued, terrified he'd outlive his fatal appeal and yet longing to be free of it? ~ Edmund White

Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But ... hear this: I think that maybe in our lives
in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles
we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less. ~ Susan Fletcher

A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States. ~ Mitt Romney

We need a new kind of citizenship, so that we can see citizens as themselves earning the rank of patriot because of their involvement in their community affairs ... We as a society need to be encouraging people to focus not just on individual wants but on serving the larger community. ~ Paul Wellstone

There's light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is that tunnel is in the back of your mind. And if you don't go to the back side of your mind you will never see the light at the end of the tunnel. And once you see it, then the task becomes to empower it in yourself and other people. Spread it as a reality. God did not retire to the seventh heaven, God is some kind of lost continent IN the human mind. ~ Terence McKenna

I watch the best. I'm a big fan of Elvis. I'm a big fan of 1950s Elvis when he would go on stage and scare people because he was a force and girls would go nuts! You can say the same thing for Prince or The Police. It's just guys who know that people are here to see a show, so I watch those guys and I love studying them because I'm a fan. ~ Bruno Mars

Manhattan in the morning is a living stream of Purpose; everyone's got a place to be and a problem on their mind. That doesn't mean it's and unfriendly place
just busy and preoccupied. Personally, I love it. I'm a social creature but there are times and places you just don't want to do more than grunt at your fellow human being. ~ Laura Anne Gilman

I am not worried about pleasing clever minds or fashionable people. In every period there will be men fated to be governed by the opinions of their century, their country, and their society. For that very reason, a freethinker or philosopher today would have been nothing but a fanatic at the time of the League.* One must not write for such readers, if one wishes to live beyond one's own age. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau