Inspirational Quotes by Horace Mann (American Educator)

Just in proportion as a man becomes good, divine, Christ-like, he passes out of the region of theorizing into the region of benevolent activities.—It is good to think well; it is divine to act well.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Action, Benevolence

Above all, let the poor hang up the amulet of temperance in their homes.
—Horace Mann

I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a great deal about their acts.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Action

Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Enjoyment

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, or from the fact that you cannot take your money with you to the other world.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Generosity

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Temptation

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Democracy

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself.—It is a quickener of devotion.
—Horace Mann

Ideality is only the avant-courier of the mind, and where that, in a healthy and normal state goes, I hold it to be a prophecy that realization can follow.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Ideals

Reproof is a medicine like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.
—Horace Mann

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Reading, Value of Time, Time Management

So, in the infinitely nobler battle in which you are engaged against error and wrong, if ever repulsed or stricken down, may you always be solaced and cheered by the exulting cry of triumph over some abuse in Church or State, some vice or folly in society, some false opinion or cruelty or guilt which you have overcome! And I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Humanity, Compassion, Helping, Kindness, Giving, Victory

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Education

Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of “Fire!” under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and rouse every muscle to its highest tension.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Temptation

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person’s money as his time.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Punctuality

The greatest service we can perform for others is to help them to help themselves.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Self-Discovery

Virtue is an angel; but she is a blind one and must ask of knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. Mere knowledge, on the other hand, like a Swiss mercenary, is ready to combat either in the ranks of sin or under the banners of righteousness—ready to forge cannon balls or to print New Testaments, to navigate a corsair’s vessel or a missionary ship.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Virtue

False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Decisions

It is well when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered amongst the multitudes. Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions of truths may be propagated amongst the people…. The whole land must be watered with the streams of knowledge.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Knowledge, Power

The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Teachers, Teaching

The object of punishment is the prevention of evil; it can never be made impulsive to good.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Punishment

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Safety, Education

More will sometimes be demanded of you than is reasonable. Bear it meekly, and exhaust your time and strength in performing your duties, rather than in vindicating your rights. Be silent, even when you are misrepresented. Turn aside when opposed, rather than confront opposition with resistance. Bear and forbear, not defending yourselves, so much as trusting to your works to defend you. Yet, in counseling you thus, I would not be understood to be a total non-resistant; a perfectly passive, non-elastic sand-bag, in society; but I would not have you resist until the blow be aimed, not so much at you, as, through you, at the sacred cause of human improvement, in which you are engaged, a point at which forbearance would be allied to crime.
—Horace Mann

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.
—Horace Mann

In such a world as ours the idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve; and the wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country, is only a sort of human oyster bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave-worms’ banquet.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Idleness

Habit is a cable.—We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Habit, Habits

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Ignorance, Defects

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
—Horace Mann
Topics: One liners, Manners

A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.
—Horace Mann
Topics: 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.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Value of Time, Time, Time Management

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