Horace Mann Quotes

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.

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 most ignorant are the most conceited.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

The most ignorant are the most conceited. Unless a man knows that there is something more to be known, his inference is, of course, that he knows every thing. Such a man always usurps the throne of universal knowledge, and assumes the right of deciding all possible questions. We all know that a conceited dunce will decide questions extemporaneous which would puzzle a college of philosophers, or a bench of judges. Ignorant and shallow-minded men do not see far enough to see the difficulty. But let a man know that there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant, and it is so much carved out of his domain of universal knowledge. And for all purposes of individual character, as well as of social usefulness, it is quite as important for a man to know the extent of his own ignorance as it is to know any thing else. To know how much there is that we do not know, is one of the most valuable parts of our attainments; for such knowledge becomes both a lesson of humility and a stimulus to exertion.

I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.

So much, then, my friends, is done, in the common and established course of nature, for the welfare of our children. Nature supplies a perennial force, unexhausted, inexhaustible, re-appearing whenever and wherever the parental relation exists. We, then, who are engaged in the sacred cause of education, are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause; and, just as soon as we can make them see the true relation in which they and their children stand to this cause, they will become advocates for its advancement, more ardent and devoted than ourselves.