Literary Birthday – 14 May – Robert Owen

Robert Owen was born 14 May 1771, and died 17 November 1858.

Robert Owen Quotes

1. Women will be no longer made the slaves of, or dependent upon men … They will be equal in education, rights, privileges and personal liberty.
2. Never argue; repeat your assertion.
3. Is it not the interest of the human race, that every one should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour?
4. All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.
5. I was forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity — not for a sect, or a party, or for a country or a colour — but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do good.
6. Courts of law, and all the paraphernalia and folly of law cannot be found in a rational state of society.
7. Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot therefore be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in errors.

Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and writer. He was one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement. He became known as ‘a capitalist who became the first Socialist’. Owen set up the first infant-school in Britain, and a three-grade school for children under ten. His works include A New View of Society.

Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Owen_by_William_Henry_Brooke.jpg

William Henry Brooke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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