Title: Opium of the people
Content:  The opium of the people (or opium of the masses) is a dictum used in reference to religion, derived from the most frequently paraphrased statements of German sociologist and economic theorist Karl Marx: "Religion is the opium of the people." In context, the statement is part of Marx's structural-functionalist argument that religion was constructed by people to calm uncertainty over their role in the universe and in society. This statement was translated from the German original, "Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes" and is often rendered as "religion…is the opiate of the masses." The full sentence from Marx translates 
Title: Opium of the people
Content:  Vladimir Lenin, speaking of religion in Novaya Zhizn in 1905, alluded to Marx's earlier comments: Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people [opium naroda]. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image [obraz], their demand for a life more or less worthy of man. (emphasis added).
Title: Marxism and religion
Content:  fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself." According to Howard Zinn, "[t]his helps us understand the mass appeal of the religious charlatans of the television screen, as well as the work of Liberation Theology in joining the soulfulness of religion to the energy of revolutionary movements in miserably poor countries". Some recent scholarship has suggested that "opium of the people" is itself a dialectical metaphor, a "protest" and an "expression" of suffering. 
Title: Opium of the people
Content: Abrams, M. H. [1934] 1971. The Milk of Paradise: The Effect of Opium Visions on the Works of De Quincey, Crabbe, Francis, Thompson, and Coleridge. New York: Octagon. ; Berridge, Victoria and Edward Griffiths. 1980. Opium and the People. London: Allen Lane ; Marx, Karl. 1844. "Introduction | A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right." Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February. ; McKinnon, Andrew M. "Reading ‘Opium of the People’: Expression, Protest and the Dialectics of Religion." Critical Sociology 31(1/2) ; O’Toole, Roger. 1984. Religion: Classic Sociological Approaches. Toronto: McGraw Hill ; Rojo, Sergio Vuskovic. 1988. "La religion, opium du people et protestation contre la misère réele: Les positions de Marx et de Lénine." Social Compass 35(2/3):197–230. ; Luchte, James. 2009. "Marx and the Sacred." The Journal of Church and State 51(3):413–37. 
Title: Opium of the people
Content:  The same metaphor was used by many authors around the 19th century. In 1798, Novalis wrote in "Blüthenstaub" ("Pollen"): "Ihre sogenannte Religion wirkt bloß wie ein Opiat reizend, betäubend, Schmerzen aus Schwäche stillend.(Their so-called religion works simply as an opiate—stimulating; numbing; quelling pain by means of weakness.)" In 1840, Heinrich Heine also used the same analogy, in his essay on Ludwig Börne: Welcome be a religion that pours into the bitter chalice of the suffering human species some sweet, soporific drops of spiritual opium, some drops of love, hope and faith. The writings of Bruno Bauer are a key influence on the 
Title: Opium of the people
Content:  that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. '''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''' [bold added]. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Title: Opium of the people
Content:  Marx used the phrase to make a structural-functionalist argument about religion, and particularly about organized religion. In his view, religion may be false, but it is a function of something real. Specifically, Marx believed that religion had certain practical functions in society that were similar to the function of opium in a sick or injured person: it reduced people's immediate suffering and provided them with pleasant illusions which gave them the strength to carry on. In this sense, while Marx may have no sympathy for religion itself, he has deep sympathy for those proletariat who put their trust in it. However, Marx also saw religion as 
Title: Antireligion
Content: Al-Ma'arri (973–1057), Arab philosopher, poet and writer. ; Thomas Paine (1737–1809), English-American author and deist who wrote a scathing critique on religion in The Age of Reason (1793–4): "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish [i.e. Muslim], appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit". ; Karl Marx (1818–1883), German philosopher, social scientist, socialist. He said "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. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up 
Title: Criticism of religion
Content:  "Religious suffering is, at the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. 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." - Karl Marx According to Karl Marx, the father of "scientific socialism", religion is a tool used by the ruling classes whereby the masses can shortly relieve their suffering via the act of experiencing religious emotions. It is in the interest of the ruling classes to instill in the masses the religious conviction that their current suffering will lead to 
Title: Sociology of religion
Content:  be rewarded in the next ("it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle …") while those who suffer oppression and poverty in this life while cultivating their spiritual wealth will be rewarded in the Kingdom of God. Hence Marx's famous line – "religion is the opium of the people", as it soothes them and dulls their senses to the pain of oppression. Some scholars have recently noted that this is a contradictory (or dialectical) metaphor, referring to religion as both an expression of suffering and a protest against suffering.

Question: who said that religion is the opiate of the masses?
Answer: Karl Marx.
Karl Marx.