Horace Mann Quotes (48 Quotes)

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

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.

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

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

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

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

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

The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal to us they implore us to think more of the character of our people than of its vast numbers to look upon our vast natural resources, not as tempters to ostentation and pride, but as means to be converted, by the refining alchemy of education, into mental and spiritual treasuresand thus give to the world the example of a nation whose wisdom increases with its prosperity, and whose virtues are equal to its power.

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.

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.

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

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.

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

Education... beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men --the balance wheel of the social machinery... It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich it prevents being poor.

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.

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

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

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

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

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate

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

As a government employee, I was always fighting for financial resources, new staff, new everything, ... (Now,) I have to make sacrifices every day (as a business owner).

Avoid witicisms at the expense of others.

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

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

It is well when the wise and the learned discover new truths but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered amongst the multitudes. Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions of truths may be propagated amongst the people.... The whole land must be watered with the streams of knowledge.

Let the public mind become corrupt, and all efforts to secure property, liberty, or life by the force of laws written on paper will be as vain as putting up a sign in an apple orchard to exclude canker worms.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

When a child can be brought to tears, and not from fear of punishment, but from repentance he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from the grief of their conduct you can be sure there is an angel nestling in their heart.

Two golden hours somewhere between sunrise and sunset. Both are set with 60 diamond minutes. No reward is offered. They are gone forever.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Evil and good are God's right hand and left.

Deeds survive the doers.

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

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