Brigham Young Quotes

Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of Heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire. That empire was founded on the banks of the Tiber by wandering brigands. When these robbers founded the city of Rome, it was evident to them that their success in attaining a balance of power with their neighbors, depended upon introducing females into their body politic, so they stole them from the Sabines, who were near neighbors. The scarcity of women gave existence to laws restricting one wife to one man. Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers.

I condemn polygamy, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law.

I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.

Some of the nations of Europe who believe in the one wife system have actually forbidden a plurality of wives by their laws; and the consequences are that the whole country among them is overrun with the most abominable practices: adulteries and unlawful connections through all their villages, towns, cities, and country places to a most fearful extent.

Always admired men who had many women. It must be that to a child of a dissatisfied woman the idea of monogamy is hollow.

Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.

It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.

Those who never philosophized until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers

Antiquity was often delighted to cast a halo of mythical glory around its illustrious names. The immortal works of this great philosopher seemed to entitle him to more than mortal honors. A legend into the authenticity of which we will abstain from inquiring, asserted that his mother, Perictione, a pure virgin, suffered an immaculate conception through the influence of Apollo. The god declared to Ariston, to whom she was about to be married, the parentage of the child.

I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.

If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant.

Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.

Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.

Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics, who were the least surly of philosophers.

No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that 'In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth'.

The words of that philosopher who offers no therapy for human suffering are empty and vain.

By legend and perhaps by nature philosophers are more accustomed to the armchair than the workbench.

You can raise good children in single parent households, and many of you perhaps here today come from that type of environment. It is possible and many do it in heroic situations, but it's much more difficult and the numbers move against us in a broad society.

The philosopher creates, he doesn't reflect.

All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.

Clearness marks the sincerity of philosophers.

John Walker, while he was in Afghanistan, told people his goal was to have four wives. ... Do we need any further proof that this guy is out of his mind? Four wives? That's how al Qaeda gets you to become a suicide bomber.

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.

Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of modern materialistic philosophers.

The growth of property and the desire for its transmission to children was, in reality, the moving power which brought in monogamy to insure legitimate heirs, and to limit their number to the actual progeny of the married pair.