Horace Mann

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

Knowledge is a mimic creation.

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

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

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

Physics is the Science of Matter; Metaphysics the Science of Mind — the Science of Being, apart from accidents and properties — Ontology.

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.

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

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

Be sure of the fact, before you lose time in searching for a cause.

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.

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

Just in proportion as a man becomes good, divine, Christ-like, he passes out of the region of theorizing, of system-building, and hireling service, into the region of beneficent activities. It is well to think well. It is divine to act …

No matter how seemingly unconnected with human affairs or remote from human interests a newly-discovered truth may appear to be, time and genius will some day make it minister to human welfare. When Dr. Franklin was once sceptically asked …

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital. As Satan said, "Evil, be thou my good," so they say, "Darkness, be thou my light."

The intellectual and moral nature of man is the one thing precious in the sight of God

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

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

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.

We put things in order; God does the rest. Lay an iron bar east and west,— it is not magnetized. Lay it north and south and it is.

The creation is a museum, all full, and crowded with wonders and beauties and glories. One door, and one only is open, by which you can enter this magnificent temple. It is the door of Knowledge. The learned laborer, the learned peasant, …

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.

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. 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 …

Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend’s house and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, sitting upon …