"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."
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Horace Mann quotes (page 6 of 10)
181 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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 to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it."
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"When will society, like a mother, take care of all her children?"
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"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."
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"The Chinese have an excellent proverb: "Be modest in speech, but excel in action."
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"Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield."
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"School is the cheapest police."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men."
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"Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just."
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"One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command."
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"We conceive of immortality as having a beginning, but no end; but we conceive of eternity as having neither beginning nor end. Hence it is proper to speak of eternity as the attribute of God, but of immortality as the attribute of man."
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"He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place."
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"Reproof is a medicine, like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good."
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"An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion."
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"Truths, no matter how momentous or enduring, are nothing to the individual until he appreciates them, and feels their force, and acknowledges their sovereignty. He cannot bow to their majesty until he sees their power. All the blind then, and all the ignorant--that is, all the children--must be educated up to the point of perceiving and admitting the truth, and acting according to its mandates."
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"It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government."
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