There is no antidote against the opium of time.

-Browne, SirThomas
  Hydriotaphia (Urn Burial), ch.5.

   Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!

-Depp,Johnny (John Christopher)
Confessions of an English Opium Eater (originally serialized in the London Magazine, published1822).

Le livre est l'opium de l'Occident. Books are the opium of the West. See Marx 557:94.

-Thibault
  La Vie litte¤  raire, pre¤  face.

Of those four winters which I passed in Indo-China opium has left the happiest memory.

-Greene, (Henry) Graham
  The Quiet  American, introduction.

There are those who prefer to get away inwardly, some with the help of a powerful imagination and an ability to abstract themselves from their surroundings†some with the help of opium or alcohol† I prefer shifting my whole body to shifting my brain, and going round the world to letting my head go round.

-Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich
^7  Byloe i dumy (My Past and Thoughts, translated by Constance Garnett,1924).

   We all have it in us to be an opium for every conceivable mass.

-Kennedy, A(lison) L(ouise)
  So I  Am Glad, ch.1.

Music is no different from opium. Music affects the human mind in a way that makes peoplethinkof nothing but music and sensual matters† Music is a treason to the country, a treason to our youth, and we should cut out all this music and replace it with something instructive.

-Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah
  Ramadan speech, 23  Jul. Quoted in Lebrecht Discord (1982).

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, and the spirit of conditions that are unspiritual. It is the opium of the people.

-Marx, Karl Heinrich
^4  A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.

Tell me, frankly, what ought to remain of Lenin: an art bronze, oil portraits, etchings, watercolours, his secretary's diary, his friends'memoirsö or a file of photographs taken of him at work and rest, archives of his books, writing pads, notebooks, shorthand reports, films, phonograph records? I don't think there's any choice. Art hasno place inmodernlife† Everycultured modern man must wage war against art, as against opium. Photograph and be photographed!

-Rodchenko, Alexander
Quoted in Robert HughesThe Shock of the New (1980).