Opium Quotes

• 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.

  Karl Marx

  Religious, Atheist, Heart

  Karl Marx, Joseph O'Malley (1977). “Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy Of Right'”, p.131, CUP Archive

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• Religion is the opium of the masses.

  Karl Marx

  Weed, Atheist, Fear

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• There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.

  Andre Malraux

  Islam, Needs, West

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• Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

  Jean Cocteau

  Love, Moving, Drug

  Jean Cocteau (1990). “Opium: The Illustrated Diary of His Cure”, Peter Owen Publishers

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• Only the opium eater truly understands the pain of death.

  John Cheever

  Pain

  John Cheever (2010). “Falconer”, p.45, Vintage

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• Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Dream, Real, Age

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• Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium!

  Thomas de Quincey

  Keys, Drug, Paradise

  'Confessions of an English Opium Eater' (1822) pt. 2 'The Pleasures of Opium'

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• Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Army, Giving, Joy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.438, Harvard University Press

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• Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Long, Laughing, Pleasure

  Thomas De Quincey, Robert Morrison (2013). “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings”, p.39, Oxford University Press

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• Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.

  Andre Malraux

  Real, Suffering, Teach

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• Although the Chinese had used opium as a medicine, there was no widespread addiction before the British arrived.

  Robert Trout

  Medicine, Addiction, Chinese

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• That's what opium does to suffering: makes it of hypothetical interest only.

  Sebastian Faulks

  Suffering, Doe, Interest

  Sebastian Faulks (2007). “Engleby: A Novel”, Doubleday Books

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• Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

  Edmund Burke

  Country, Wine, Beer

  Edmund Burke (1834). “The works of ... Edmund Burke”, p.256

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• There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

  Oscar Wilde

  Memories, Madness, Horror

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.201, Diversion Books

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• The expense of a war could be paid in time; but the expense of opium, when once the habit is formed, will only increase with time.

  Townsend Harris

  War, Habit, Increase

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• It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.

  Jean Cocteau

  Knowing, Drug, Saint

  Jean Cocteau (1990). “Opium: The Illustrated Diary of His Cure”, Peter Owen Publishers

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• It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.

  Antonin Artaud

  Order, Drug, Absence

  "Appeal to Youth: Intoxication-Disintoxication (1934)". "Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings". Book by Antonin Artaud, 1976.

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• Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.

  Thomas Sydenham

  Men, Giving, Suffering

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• The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

  Jean Cocteau

  Addiction, House, Smoking

  Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland (1972). “Cocteau's world: an anthology of writings”, Owen

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• If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

  Jean Cocteau

  Addiction, House, Smoking

  Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland (1972). “Cocteau's world: an anthology of writings”, Owen

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• Religion is the opium of the poor.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Poor

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.7764, Simon and Schuster

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• Optimism is the opium of the people.

  Milan Kundera

  Optimistic, Optimism, People

  Milan Kundera (1983). “The Joke”, Viking Press

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• The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

  Karl Marx

  Giving Up, Real, People

  Karl Marx (1975). “Early writings”, Vintage

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• The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.

  Jean Cocteau

  Stupid, Smell, Drug

  Jean Cocteau (1932). “Opium: The Diary of an Addict”

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• If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe.

  Kerry Thornley

  Weed, Marijuana, Religion

  The Introduction to the 5th Edition of "Principia Discordia" by Kerry Thornley, 1963.

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