The famously-misquoted quote of Karl MarxWe don't know if the following exchange is anecdotal or if it really took place, but it illustrates the use and misuse of one of Karl Marx's quotes.When Hrushev met Patriarch Alexei I for the first time, h...
...e immediately stated:— We are Marxists and therefore share Marx's view that religion is the opium of the people!The Patriarch replied:— Although we are not Marxists, we also share Marx's view that religion is the heart of our heartless world.— Where does Marx say this?!— Right there, where he compares religion to opium. In the previous sentence.The full quote from Marx, with retained highlighting is as follows:The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does no...
...t make man. 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 encyclopaedic 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 realisation 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 s...
...uffering. 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.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 re...
...ligion is the halo.In Marx's time, opium was primarily used as a anaesthetic. It was only in the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries that opium began to be perceived as a narcotic.Source - edited@BeornAndTheShieldmaidenBoost