Horace Mann Quotes

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

I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the creation of evil also. He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place. Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up all the vacuities of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead. Superstition is the mathematical complement of religious truth; and just so much less as the life of a human being is reclaimed to good, just so much more is it delivered over to evil. The man or the institution, therefore, that withholds knowledge from a child, or from a race of children, exercises the awful power of changing the world in which they are to live, just as much as though he should annihilate all that is most lovely and grand in this planet of ours, or transport the victim of his cruelty to some dark and frigid zone of the universe, where the sweets of knowledge are unknown, and the terrors of ignorance hold their undisputed and remorseless reign.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

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.

all the members of society have a direct interest in the manners of each of its individuals, because each one is a radiating point, the center of a circle which he fills with pleasure or annoyance, not only for those who voluntarily enter it but for those, who, in the promiscuous movements of society, are caught within its circumference.

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

A HOUSE WITHOUT BOOKS IS LIKE A ROOM WITHOUT WINDOWS

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

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

God draweth straight lines but we call them crooked.