Top 185 Quotes & Sayings by Horace Mann

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

There is nothing so costly as ignorance.

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

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

School is the cheapest police.

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

We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

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.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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