Opium Quotes

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)
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. View quote
Karl Marx
Religion... is the opium of the people. View quote
Karl Marx
Optimism is the opium of the people. View quote
Milan Kundera
There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman. View quote
André Malraux
Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real. View quote
André Malraux
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. View quote
Antonin Artaud
A good deal of classical music is, today, the opium of the good citizen. View quote
George Steiner
Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals. View quote
Edmund Wilson
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. View quote
Jean Cocteau
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)
It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people. View quote
Simone Weil
As a young child Audrey Carsons wanted to be writers because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle. View quote
William S. Burroughs
All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way. View quote
Hunter S. Thompson
This is the worst problem with living history museums. They always leave the best parts out. Like typhus. And opium. And scarlet letters. Shunning. Witch-burning. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium. View quote
Matthew Arnold
It's about the girlfriend who left me last year. I tried to put all my anger in those words, even though I'm just as much to blame for the break-up. 'Soma' is based on the idea that a love relationship is almost the same as opium: it slowly puts you to sleep, it soothes you, and gives you the illusion of sureness and security. Very deceivable. View quote
Billy Corgan
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium! View quote
Thomas De Quincey
Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide. View quote
Tom Robbins
The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world. View quote
Pablo Picasso
The appeal for drugs has dwindled. Except for actual opium. If I could get real opium, I'd stir it in my hot coffee every morning. People keep giving me marijuana. I've got pouches in a drawer. I've been meaning to smoke a joint and watch Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. I planned to do this three months ago and I still haven't gotten around to it. (Nick Tosches)
I think you can go back in history and look at what the effect in Asia and the world was of a divided, fractured China from, you know, the opium wars through the Chinese civil war, and I don't think it was pretty for Asia or the world. View quote
Dennis C. Blair
If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe. View quote
Kerry Thornley
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. View quote
Townsend Harris
If you make a treaty first with the United States and settle the matter of the opium trade, England cannot change this, though she should desire to do so. View quote
Townsend Harris