Quotes from Horace Mann

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us.

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.

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.

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

A house without books is like a room without windows.

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

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

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.

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.

Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!

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

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.

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

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

No man has the right to bring up children without surrounding them with books.

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

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

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