Horace Mann Quotes

Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one's self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself, gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.

The highest service we can perform for others is to help them help themselves.

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.

There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.

Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man.

We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

There is nothing so costly as ignorance.

Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.

When will society, like a mother, take care of all her children?

The Chinese have an excellent proverb: "Be modest in speech, but excel in action.

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

Forts, arsenals, garrisons, armies, navies, are means of security and defence, which were invented in half-civilized times and in feudal or despotic countries; but schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications, and if they are dismantled and dilapidated, ignorance and vice will pour in their legions through every breach.

As an apple is not in any proper sense an apple until it is ripe, so a human being is not in any proper sense a human being until he is educated.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.