Religion Is The Opium Of The

This line appears in Marx's 1843 manuscript Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (published 1844), in the introduction. The full passage is more nuanced than the famous phrase suggests: Marx described religion as both "the expression of real suffering" and "the protest against real suffering," calling it "the opium of the people" in the sense that it provides consolation that obscures material causes. The metaphor was not entirely novel — similar formulations appeared in earlier German writers — but Marx's version became the most widely cited.