Horace mann quotes

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.

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.

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.

On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there.

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

Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.

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

There is not a good work which the hand of man has ever undertaken, which his heart has ever conceived, which does not require a good education for its helper.

He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.

Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.

Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.

Where a love of natural beauty has been cultivated, all nature becomes a stupendous gallery, as much superior in form and in coloring to the choicest collections of human art, as the heavens are broader and loftier than the Louvre or the Vatican.

To know the machine one must know where each part belongs, and what its office is.

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

We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life's existence.

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion.

Above all, let the poor hang up the amulet of temperance in their homes.

Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.

We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

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

The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters-where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies.

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.

If you wish to write well, study the life about you,--life in the public streets.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.

Reproof is a medicine, like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.

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.

You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it; but let all you tell be truth.

NO error is infused into the young mind, to lie there dormant, or to be reproduced only when the subject of thought or action recurs to which the error belongs; but the error becomes a model or archetype, after whose likeness the active powers of the mind create a thousand other errors.

As all truth is from God, it necessarily follows that true science and true religion can never be at variance.

Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.

So, in the infinitely nobler battle in which you are engaged against error and wrong, if ever repulsed or stricken down, may you always be solaced and cheered by the exulting cry of triumph over some abuse in Church or State, some vice or folly in society, some false opinion or cruelty or guilt which you have overcome! And I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

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.

Thank Heaven, the female heart is untenantable by atheism.

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.

When the panting and thirsting soul first drinks the delicious waters of truth, when the moral and intellectual tastes and desires first seize the fragrant fruits that flourish in the garden of knowledge, then does the child catch a glimpse and foretaste of heaven.

False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.

Truths, no matter how momentous or enduring, are nothing to the individual until he appreciates them, and feels their force, and acknowledges their sovereignty. He cannot bow to their majesty until he sees their power. All the blind then, and all the ignorant--that is, all the children--must be educated up to the point of perceiving and admitting the truth, and acting according to its mandates.

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.

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

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men.

When a child can be brought to tears, not from fear of punishment, but from repentance for his offence, he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from grief at one's own conduct, be sure there is an angel nestling in the bosom.

The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield.

Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.

A teacher should, above all things, first induce a desire in the pupil for the acquisition he wishes to impart.

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.

Ignorance has been well represented under the similitude of a dungeon, where, though it is full of life, yet darkness and silence reign. But in society the bars and locks have been broken; the dungeon itself is demolished; the prisoners are out; they are in the midst of us. We have no security but to teach and renovate them.

It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government.

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

Teaching isn't one-tenth as effective as training.

Keep one thing in view forever- the truth; and if you do this, though it may seem to lead you away from the opinion of men, it will assuredly conduct you to the throne of God.

Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.

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.

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.

Of all "rights" which command attention at the present time among us, woman's rights seem to take precedence.

We conceive of immortality as having a beginning, but no end; but we conceive of eternity as having neither beginning nor end. Hence it is proper to speak of eternity as the attribute of God, but of immortality as the attribute of man.

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.

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.

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.

If there is anything for which I would go back to childhood, and live this weary life over again, it is for the burning, exalting, transporting thrill and ecstasy with which the young faculties hold their earliest communion with knowledge.

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.

School is the cheapest police.

It is far more difficult, I assure you, to live for the truth than to die for it.

Ten men have failed from defect in morals, where one has failed from defect in intellect.

He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead.

Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

The false man is more false to himself than to any one else. He may despoil others, but himself is the chief loser. The world's scorn he might sometimes forget, but the knowledge of his own perfidy is undying.

Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.

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.

When you introduce into our schools a spirit of emulation, you have present the keenest spur admissible to the youthful intellect.

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.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.

Education must bring the practice as nearly as possible to the theory. As the children now are, so will the sovereigns soon be.

New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation.

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

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.

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

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.

In our country and in our times no man is worthy the honored name of statesman who does not include the highest practicable education of the people in all his plans of administration. He may have eloquence, he may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy, jurisprudence; and by these he might claim, in other countries, the elevated rank of a statesman: but unless he speaks, plans, labors, at all times and in all places, for the culture and edification of the whole people, he is not, he cannot be, an American statesman.

The education already given to the people creates the necessity of giving them more.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.

Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.

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

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.

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.

Every event in this world is the effect of some precedent cause, and also the cause of some subsequent effect.

The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled.

If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.

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

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

Love must be the same in all worlds.

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.

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

Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it. City libraries tell us of the reign of Jesus Christ but city streets tell us of the reign of Satan.

Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.

Benevolence is a world of itself -- a world which mankind, as yet, have hardly begun to explore. We have, as it were, only skirted along its coasts for a few leagues, without penetrating the recesses, or gathering the riches of its vast interior.

In such a world as ours the idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve; and the wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country, is only a sort of human oyster bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave-worms' banquet.

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

We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.

The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.

There is nothing so costly as ignorance.

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.

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

Let but the public mind become once thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty or life, by mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off the canker-worms.

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

Deeds survive the doers.

If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.

Whatever statesman or sage will effect reforms upon a gigantic or godlike scale must begin with the young.

Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of "Fire!" under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and brace every muscle to its highest tension.

There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.

Those who exert the first influence upon the mind have the greatest power.

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

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

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.