The President of the United States thinks that for the Japanese opium is more dangerous than war.

By means of steam one can go from California to Japan in eighteen days.

If Japan had been near to either England or France, war would have broken out long ago.

It will be quite satisfactory if you open them gradually, as the circumstances may require; but the President assures you that this will not be the case if you make a treaty with England first.

It appears that the English think the Japanese... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also.

If you make a treaty first with the United States and settle the matter of the opium trade, England cannot change this, though she should desire to do so.

Since the invention of steamships distant countries have become like those that are near at hand.

We do not wish to open your ports to foreign trade all at once.

As the treaty made with the United States was the first treaty entered into by your country with other countries, therefore the President regards Japan with peculiar friendliness.

The President of the United States thinks that for the Japanese opium is more dangerous than war.

If I write in my name to the agents of England and France residing in Asia and inform them that Japan is ready to make a commercial treaty with their countries, the number of steamers will be reduced from fifty to two or three.

If war should break out between England and Japan, the latter would suffer much more than the former.

The expense of a war could be paid in time; but the expense of opium, when once the habit is formed, will only increase with time.

In case of war, a treaty would have to be made at the end of the war.

The United States have no possessions in the east and do not desire to have any, as other countries do.

Any nation that refuses to hold intercourse with other nations must expect to be excluded from this family.

The President is of opinion that if Japan makes a treaty with the United States, all other foreign countries will make the same kind of a treaty, and Japan will be safe thereafter.

Two things are desired in order that intercourse may be had: First, that a minister or agent be allowed to reside at the capital. Second, that commerce between different countries be freely allowed.

Japan and China are isolated and without intercourse with other countries; hence the President directed me to attend to or watch the state of affairs in China also.

We were sent to this country by the President, who desires to promote the welfare of Japan, and are quite different from the ambassadors of other countries.

When the ambassadors of other foreign countries come to Japan to make treaties, they can be told that such and such a treaty has been made with the ambassador of the United States, and they will rest satisfied with this.

The nations of the West hope that by means of steam communication all the world will become as one family.

In time of war steamships and improved arms are the most important things.

The President wishes the Japanese to be very prudent about the introduction of opium, and if a treaty is made, he wishes that opium may be strictly prohibited.

The President regards the Japanese as a brave people; but courage, though useful in time of war, is subordinate to knowledge of arts; hence, courage without such knowledge is not to be highly esteemed.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

It appears that the English think the Japanese... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also.

If organized religion is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe.

If you make a treaty first with the United States and settle the matter of the opium trade, England cannot change this, though she should desire to do so.

Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.

The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.

Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.

Confucianism strongly condemned the use of drugs like opium.

Although the Chinese had used opium as a medicine, there was no widespread addiction before the British arrived.

The President of the United States thinks that for the Japanese opium is more dangerous than war.

Optimism is the opium of the people.

Many Chinese saw opium as a poison introduced by foreign enemies.

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

The expense of a war could be paid in time; but the expense of opium, when once the habit is formed, will only increase with time.

Opium teaches only one thing, which is that aside from physical suffering, there is nothing real.

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.

It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.

The East India Company established a monopoly over the production of opium, shortly after taking over Bengal.

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.

There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.

Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.

We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.