Orestes Brownson

“There is no question that education has been more generally diffused than it was in the middle ages, but it is doubtful if the number of thinkers has been increased, or real mental culture extended. Education loses in thoroughness and depth what it gains in surface.”

“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 tendency of modern society is in the opposite direction. England and the United States, the most modern of all nations, and the best exponents the world has of the tendencies of modern civilization, treat poverty as a crime, and hold honest labor should be endured by none who can escape it.”

“The middle class is always a firm champion of equality, when it concerns humbling a class above it; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it.”

“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.”