"Religion is the opium of the people" is one of the
most frequently paraphrased statements of German economist Karl Marx. It was
translated from the German original, "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des
Volkes" and is often referred to as "religion is the opiate of the
masses." The quotation originates from the introduction of his proposed
work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right; this work
was never written, but the introduction (written in 1843) was published in 1844
in Marx's own journal Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, a collaboration with
Arnold Ruge.
The phrase "This opium you feed your people" appeared in
1797 in Marquis de Sade's text L'Histoire de Juliette and Novalis's
"[R]eligion acts merely as an opiate" around the same time. The full
quote from Karl Marx is: "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".
