Sunday, October 07, 2007

"Religion is the opium of the people" (translated from the German Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes") is one of the most frequently quoted (and sometimes misquoted as "opiate of the people" or "opiate of the masses") statements of Karl Marx, from the introduction of his 1843 work Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right which was subsequently released one year later in Marx's own journal Deutsch-Französischen Jahrbücher—a collaboration with Arnold Ruge. Here is what Marx said, in context:
Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
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 ..... "wikipedia"


i know i tackled this part before but i was criticised because of two things ... the most important is "OPIATE" and the other is that people believe that Vladimir Lenin was the one who stated that quote and not Karl Marx .....

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