"It is most absurd, therefore, to maintain, as some do, that religion was devised by the cunning and craft of a few individuals, as a means of keeping the body of the people in due subjection, while there was nothing which those very individuals, while teaching others to worship God, less believed than the of a God. I readily acknowledge, that designing men have introduced a vast number of fictions into religion, with the view of inspiring the populace with reverence or striking them with terror, and thereby rendering them more obsequious; but they never could have succeeded in this, had the minds of men not been previously imbued with that uniform belief in God, from which, as from its seed, the religious propensity springs."
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John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 3
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
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Opium of the people
Religion is the opium of the people" is one of the most frequently quoted statements of German economist Karl Marx. It was translated from the German original, "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes.
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