Vonnegut Quote
“About Stalin’s shuttered churches, and those in China today: Such suppression of religion was supposedly justified by Karl Marx’s statement that ‘religion is the opium of the people.’ Marx said that back in 1844, when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective painkillers anyone could take. Marx himself had taken them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting to those in economic or social distress. It was a casual truism, not a dictum.
“When Marx wrote those words, by the way, w hadn’t even freed our slaves yet. Who do you think was more pleasing in the eyes of a merciful God back then, Karl Marx or the United States of America?”
–Kurt Vonnegut, Man Without a Country
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January 4th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
a little slip: ‘w’ hadn’t freed our slaves?