Religious misery is in one mouth the expression of real misery, and in another is a protestation against real misery. Religion is the moan of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
Stenning trans., Selected Essays (1926), p. 12 — from Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Paris, 1844, p. 72
That is H. J. Stenning’s 1926 English, the earliest rendering we could check against a scan. Marx’s German on page 72 of the 1844 printing reads “Sie ist das Opium des Volks.” Later translators reached for warmer words — the widely reproduced modern version has “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world” — but every version ends the same way, and in none of them is “Religion is the opium of the people” a single sentence Marx wrote.
✓Public domain
Both layers are clear. Marx’s German original was published in Paris in 1844 and has long been in the public domain. The English shown here is H. J. Stenning’s translation, first published in New York by International Publishers in 1926 — before 1931, so it is public domain in the United States too. Note that the more familiar modern English wording of this passage comes from a much later translation and is not public domain; that is why we quote the 1926 text.
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