"The Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these features, Sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting - it squints towards monarchy. And does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American? Your president may easily become king... Where are your checks in this government?
...I would rather infinitely - and I am sure most of this convention are of the same opinion - have a king, lords, and commons than a government so replete with such insupportable evils."

"It has been observed, by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity. When they assembled, the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity."

"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own country was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up... The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems*, invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object...
*eg. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc."

"As to the book called the Bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book."

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of soc ial and political equality."

"In all this I can but see the doom of Slavery. The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution. But they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance, and then too th is disturbance will give such an impetus to the production of their staple, cotton, in other parts of the world that they can never recover the controll of the market again for that comodity. This will reduce the value of negroes so much that they will n ever be worth fighting over again."

"I never was an Abolitionest, not even what could be called anti slavery, but I try to judge farely & honestly and it become patent to my mind early in the rebellion that the North & South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, an d that without Slavery."

"Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation [of Texas] was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most u njust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory."

"The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."

"[L]ooked at from the standpoint of the ultimate result, there was little real difference to the Indian whether the land was taken by treaty or by war. ...No treaty could be satisfactory to the whites, no treaty served the needs of humanity and civilization, unless it gave the land to the Americans as unreservedly as any succe ssful war."

"Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conflict, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is, indeed, a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized nations. ...It is as idle to apply to savages t he rules of international morality which obtain between stable and cultured communities, as it would be to judge the fifth-century English conquest of Britain by the standards of to-day."

"The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. ...[I]t is of incal culable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races."

"We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great G ermanic nation..."

"Winston Churchill, the present would-be British Fuehrer, is a person with a range of ideas limited to the adventures and opportunities of British political life. He has never given evidence of thinking extensively, or of any scientific or literary capac ity... His ideology, picked up in the garrison life of India, on the reefs of South Africa, the maternal home and the conversation of wealthy Conservative households, is a pitiful jumble of incoherent nonsense. A boy scout is better equipped. He has se rved his purpose and it is high time he retired upon his laurels before we forget the debt we owe him..."

"Churchill and Hitler are striving to change the nature of their respective countrymen by forcing and hammering violent methods on them. Man may be suppressed in this manner but he cannot be changed. Ahimsa [non-violence in the Hindu tradition], on the other hand, can change human nature and sooner than men like Churchill and Hitler."

"What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. ...England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red - not merely Germany and Japan."

"It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campai gn of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of King-Emperor."

"Sooner or later you will have to crush Gandhi and the Indian Congress and all they stand for."

"The United States was at peace with that Nation [Japan] and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American Island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to c ontinue the existing diplomatic relations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace."

"We can see now that we Americans were caught unprepared, because we were ordinary human beings, following the best advice we had at the time. No one would have guessed in 1941 that we would be attacked in such an unsportsmanlike manner as we were. No o ne could have visualized Pearl Harbor, either out there or in Washington. But if we had known then what we know now, we would have expected an attack in 1941."

"Then at 12 o'clock we (viz., General Marshall and I) went to the White House, where we were until nearly half past one. At the meeting were Hull, Knox, Marshall, Stark, and myself. There the President ...brought up entirely the relations with the Japan ese. He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we would do. The question was how we should maneuver them in to the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition."

"I emphasized that in my opinion the Japanese were likely to break out at any time with new acts of conquest and that the matter of safeguarding our national security was in the hands of the Army and the Navy. With due deference I expressed my judgement that any plans for our military defense should include an assumption that the Japanese might make the element of surprise a central point in their strategy and also might attack at various points simultaneously with a view to demoralizing efforts of defen se and of coordination."

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful b ombing with conventional weapons.
...The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion , and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. We were the first to have this weapon in our possession, and the first to use it. There is a practical certainty that potential enemies will have it in the future and that atomic bombs will some time be used against us."

"It [aviation] is a tool specially shaped for Western hands, a scientific art which others only copy in a mediocre fashion, another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the Grecian inheritance of Europe, one of those priceless possessions whic h permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown."

"Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few very far-sighted Jewish people rea lize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government."

"In short, the deterrent ratio might well shift to the Soviets so heavily, during the years of the [missile] gap, as to open to them a shortcut to world domination... In the years of the gap, the Soviets may be expected to use their superior striking abi lity to achieve their objective in many ways which may not require launching an actual attack. Their missile power will be the shield from behind which they will slowly, but surely, advance..."

"[I]t would be premature to reach a judgment as to whether there is a gap or not a gap."

"It is true that at the time [1962] we had a strategic nuclear force of approximately five thousand warheads compared to the Soviet's three hundred."

This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base - by the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass-destruction - constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all th e Americas..."

"[T]he assumption that the strategic nuclear balance mattered in any way was wrong... As far as I am concerned, it made no difference... If my memory serves me correctly, we had some five thousand strategic nuclear warheads as against t heir three hundred. Can anyone seriously tell me that their having three hundred and forty would have made any difference? The military balance wasn't changed. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now..."

"You have to remember that, right from the beginning, it was President Kennedy who said that it was politically unacceptable for us to leave those [Cuban] missile sites alone. He didn't say militarily, he said politically."

"For a long time then, I reflected on this confusion in the astronomical traditions concerning the derivation of the motions of the universe's spheres. I began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and mo st systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world. For this reason I undertook the task of rereading the works of all the philoso phers which I could obtain to learn whether anyone had ever proposed other motions of the universe's spheres than those expounded by the teachers of astronomy in the schools. And in fact I found in Cicero that Hicetas supposed the earth to move. Later I also discovered in Plutarch that certain others were of this opinion.
...Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth."

"The Syracusan Hicetas, as Theophrastus asserts, holds the view that the heaven, sun, moon, stars, and in short all of the things on high are stationary, and that nothing in the world is in motion except the earth, which by revolving and twisting round it s axis with extreme velocity produces all the same results as would be produced if the earth were stationary and the heaven in motion..."

"Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressiv e motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center."

"While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the s tars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day."

"But Aristarchus of Samos brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, in which the premises lead to the conclusion that the universe is many times greater than that now so called. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain motion less, that the earth revolves about the sun in the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same center as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface."

"If Nicolaus Copernicus, the distinguished and incomparable master, in this work had not been deprived of exquisite and faultless instruments, he would have left us this science far more well-established. For he, if anybody, was outstanding and had the m ost perfect understanding of the geometrical and arithmetical requisites for building up this discipline. Nor was he in any respect inferior to Ptolemy; on the contrary, he surpassed him greatly in certain fields, particularly as far as the device of fit ness and compendious harmony in hypotheses is concerned. And his apparently absurd opinion that the Earth revolves does not obstruct this estimate, because a circular motion designed to go on uniformly about another point than the very center of the circ le, as actually found in the Ptolemaic hypotheses of all the planets except that of the Sun, offends against the very basic principles of our discipline in a far more absurd and intolerable way than does the attributing to the Earth one motion or another which, being a natural motion, turns out to be imperceptible. There does not at all arise from this assumption so many unsuitable consequences as most people think."

"Some also deny that the earth is in the middest of the world, and some affirme that it is mouable, as also Copernicus by way of supposition, and not for that he thought so in deede: who affirmeth that the earth turneth about, and that the sunne standeth still in the midst of the heauens, by help of which false supposition he hath made truer demonstrations of the motions and reuolutions of the celestiall Spheares, than euer were made before..."

"Nevertheless, in the system of Copernicus there are found many and great inconveniences; for both the loading of the earth with a triple motion is very incommodious, and the separation of the sun from the company of the planets, with which it has so many passions in common, is likewise a difficulty, and the introduction of so much immobility in nature, by representing the sun and stars as immoveable, especially being of all bodies the highest and most radiant, and making the moon revolve about the earth in an epicycle, and some other assumptions of his, are the speculations of one who cares not what fictions he introduces into nature, provided his calculations answer."

"Empedocles says that the greater part of the members of animals were generated by chance...
What, then, hinders but that the parts in Nature may also thus arise [from necessity]? For instance, that the teeth should arise from necessity, the front teeth sharp and adapted to divide the food, the molars broad and adapted to breaking the food into pieces.
It may be said that they were not made for this purpose, but that this purposive arrangement came about by chance; and the same reasoning is applied to other parts of the body in which subsistence for some purpose is apparent. And it is argued that where all things happened as if they were made for some purpose, being aptly united by chance, these were preserved, but such as were not aptly made, these were lost and still perish, according to what Empedocles says concerning the bull species with human hea ds. This, therefore, and similar reasoning, may lead some to doubt on this subject."

"All advances by degrees in Nature, and nothing by leaps, and this law as applied to each, is part of my doctrine of Continuity. Although there may exist in some other world species intermediate between Man and the Apes, Nature has thought it best to rem ove them from us, in order to establish our superiority beyond question. I speak of intermediate species, and by no means limit myself to those leading to Man. I strongly approve of the research for analogies; plants, insects, and Comparative Anatomy wi ll increase these analogies, especially when we are able to take advantage of the microscope more than at present."

"The elementary particles which form the embryo are each drawn from the corresponding structure in the parent, and conserve a sort of remembrance of their previous form, so that in the offspring they will reflect and reproduce a resemblance to the parents ...
We can thus readily explain how new species are formed... by supposing that the elementary particles may not always retain the order which they present in the parents, but may fortuitously produce differences, which, multiplying and accumulating, have res ulted in the infinite variety of species which we see at the present time."

"The agreement of so many kinds of animals in a certain common structure, which seems to be fundamental not only in their skeletons, but also in the arrangement of the other parts - so that a wonderfully simple typical form, by the shortening and lengthen ing of some parts, and by the suppression and development of others, might be able to produce an immense variety of species - allows a ray of hope, however faint, to enter our minds, that here perhaps some result may be obtained, by the application of the principle of the mechanism of nature (without which there can be no natural science in general). This analogy of forms, which with all their differences seem to have been produced in accordance with a common prototype, strengthens our suspicions of an a ctual blood-relationship between them in their derivation from a common parent through the gradual approximation of one class of animals to another - beginning with the one in which the principle of purposiveness seems to be best authenticated, ie. man, a nd extending down to the polyps, and from these even down to mosses and lichens, and arriving finally at raw matter, the lowest stage of nature observable by us."

"All animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions... and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity."

"I suppose that everyone is familiar in outline with the theory of the origin of species which Darwin promulgated. Through the last fifty years this theme of the natural selection of favored races has been developed and expounded in writings innumerable. Favored races certainly can replace others. The argument is sound, b ut we are doubtful of its value. For us that debate stands adjourned. We go to Darwin for his incomparable collection of facts. We would fain emulate his scholarship, his width and his power of exposition, but to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority. We read his scheme of evolution as we would those of Leucretius or of Lamarck, delighting in their simplicity and courage."

"Modern research lends not the smallest encouragement or sanction to the view that gradual evolution occurs by the transformation of masses of individuals, though that fancy has fixed itself on popular imagination."

"[T]hough we must hold to our faith in the evolution of species, there is little evidence as to how it has come about, and no clear proof that the process is continuing in any considerable degree at the present time."

"For the moment at least, the Darwinian period is past; we can no longer enjoy the comfortable assurance, which once satisfied so many of us, that the main problem has been solved - all is again in the melting pot. By now, in fact, a new generation has g rown up that knows not Darwin. Is even then evolution not a scientifically ascertained fact? No! We must hold it as an act of faith because there is no alternative."

• Herbert Ives, a physicist for Bell Laboratories, remained unshakeably opposed to relativity, though the Ives-Stillwell experiment which bears his name is generally interpreted as a direct corroboration of Einstein's theory: "His [Ives'] work on the s o-called tranverse Doppler effect, performed with Stillwell in the period 1938-41, is one of three crucial optical experiments which, taken together, lead inductively to the Lorentz transformations as used in the special theory of relativity; in a sense i t, more than either of the two, may be considered as the cornerstone of the special principle of relativity, as formulated years before by Einstein..." (Howard P. Robertson, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, 1956)

  "The 'principle' of the constancy of the velocity of light is not merely 'ununderstandable', it is not supported by 'objective matters of fact'; it is untenable, and, as we shall see, unnecessary...
  Also of philosophical import is that with the abandonment of the 'principle' of the constancy of the velocity of light, the geometries which have been based on it, with their fusion of space and time, must be denied their claim to be a true description of the physical world."

  Herbert E. Ives, "Revisions of the Lorentz Transformations", October 27, 1950
  
  
• More philosophically-minded critics regarded Einstein's argument for relativity as little more than a logical bait-and-switch ploy:

  "[T]he supposition of most expounders of the Special Theory, that Einstein has proved the relativity of simultaneity in general - or that his 'simultaneity' is something more than a logical artefact - must manifestly be given up."

  Arthur O. Lovejoy, "The Dialectical Argument Against Absolute Simultaneity", The Journal of Philosophy, 27, 1930

"Einstein is an analytical mathematician seeking to give a physical interpretation to the conclusions of his mathematical process. In this he is hampered by a load of contradictory and absurd assumptions of the school that he follows, which throws him in to all manner of difficulty. Einstein has such a faculty for embracing both sides of a contradiction that one would have to be of the same frame of mind to follow his thought, it is so peculiarly his own. The whole Relativity theory is as easy to follow as the path of a bat in the air at night."

"Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice."