Horace Mann Quotes
It would be more honourable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more.
Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.
As each generation comes into the world devoid of knowledge, its first duty is to obtain possession of the stores already amassed. It must overtake its predecessors before it can pass by them.
The most precious wine is produced upon the sides of volcanoes. Now bold and inspiring ideals are only born of a clear head that stands over a glowing heart.
Of all "rights" which command attention at the present time among us, woman's rights seem to take precedence.
The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat.
When you introduce into our schools a spirit of emulation, you have present the keenest spur admissible to the youthful intellect.
After a child has arrived at the legal age for attending school,-whether he be the child of noble or of peasant,-the only two absolute grounds of exemption from attendance are sickness and death.
He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.
If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education.
Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.
We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.
The devil tempts men through their ambition, their cupidity, or their appetite, until he comes to the profane swearer, whom he clutches without any reward.
You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it; but let all you tell be truth.
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.
Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield.
Man ... has an inborn religious sentiment that whispers of a God to his inmost soul, as a shell taken from the deep yet echoes forever the ocean's roar.
They who set an example make a highway. Others follow the example, because it is easier to travel on a highway than over untrodden grounds.
Reproof is a medicine, like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.
He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.
One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command.
Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.
If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.
Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth; And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error.
Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.
