Horace Mann Quotes

125 Sourced Quotes

Those who exert the first influence upon the mind have the greatest power.

Horace Mann
Both poetry and philosophy are prodigal of eulogy over the mind which ransoms itself by its own energy from a captivity to custom, which breaks the common bounds of empire, and cuts a Simplon over mountains of difficulty for its own purposes, whether of good or of evil.

Horace Mann
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.

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

Horace Mann
Habit can overcome anything but instinct, and can greatly modify even that.

Horace Mann
There is nothing derogatory in any employment which ministers to the well-being of the race. It is the spirit that is carried into an employment that elevates or degrades it.

Horace Mann
A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.

Horace Mann
Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

Horace Mann
Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.

Horace Mann
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.

Horace Mann
Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.

Horace Mann
I hold Education to be an organic necessity of a human being.

Horace Mann
The earth endured Christ's ministry only three years;--not three weeks after his real character and purposes were generally known.

Horace Mann
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.

Horace Mann
The soul of the truly benevolent man does not seem to reside much in his own body. Its life, to a great extent, is a mere reflex of the lives of others. It migrates into their bodies, and identifying its existence with their existence, finds its own happiness in increasing and prolonging their pleasures, in extinguishing or solacing their pains.

Horace Mann
The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

Horace Mann
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 luxurious chairs and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind.

Horace Mann
Under the sublime law of progress, the present outgrows the past. The great heart of humanity is heaving with the hopes of a brighter day. All the higher instincts of our nature prophesy its approach; and the best intellects of the race are struggling to turn that prophecy into fulfilment.

Horace Mann
Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolate by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened.

Horace Mann
No error is infused into the young mind, to lie there dormant, or to be reproduced only when the subject of thought or action recurs to which the error belongs; but the error becomes a model or archetype, after whose likeness the active powers of the mind create a thousand other errors.

Horace Mann
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. As the mind becomes habituated to travel on the great thoroughfares which example makes, it seems even unnatural to leave them.

Horace Mann
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.

Horace Mann
The poniard and the stiletto were once the resource of a murderous spirit; now the vengeance, which formerly would assassinate in the dark, libels character, in the light of day, through the medium of the press. But through this instrumentality good can be wrought as well as evil.

Horace Mann
Some languages are musical in themselves, so that it is pleasant to hear any one read or converse in them, even though we do not understand a word that we hear.... Others are full of growling, snarling, hissing sounds, as though wild beasts and serpents had first taught the people to speak.

Horace Mann
To know the machine one must know where each part belongs, and what its office is.

Horace Mann