Quotes on Opiates

Religion is the opiate of the people.

A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.

OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

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.

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .

You know how they say that religion is the opiate of the masses? Well I took masses of opiates religiously.

I can get away before the storm hits. Away from a world in which opiates have become the religion of the masses.

I sleep all day. Noises flit around the house- garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. [...] It is afternoon, it is night, it is morning. Everything is reduced to this bed, this endless slumber that makes the days into one day, makes time stop, stretches and compacts time until it is meaningless.

It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate.

I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.

The helpless ecstasy of loosing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic.