Orestes Brownson Quotes

If there must always be a laboring population distinct from proprietors and employers, we regard the slave system as decidedly preferable to the system at wages.

Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender consciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders.

The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our churches into halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could: but to establish a system of state - we said national - schools, from which all religion was to be excluded.

If you would make a man happy, study not to augment his goods; but to diminish his wants. One of the greatest services Christianity has rendered the world has been its consecration of poverty, and its elevation of labor to the dignity of a moral duty.

The immortality of the soul is assented to rather than believed, believed rather than lived.

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome.

I love the Irish for their attachment to the faith and for many amiable and noble qualities, but they are deficient in good sense, sound judgement, and manly character.