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

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

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Education, Society

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

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
Topics: Opinions, Opinion

Biography, especially of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study.—Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Biography

The great aim of human life
—Horace Mann
Topics: Usefullness, One liners

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

Let but the public mind once become thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty, or life, by mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off canker-worms.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Morality, Morals, Law

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

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Affectation

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

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: Power, Knowledge

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

Let there be an entire abstinence from intoxicating drinks throughout this country during the period of a single generation, and a mob would be as impossible as combustion without oxygen.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Drunkenness

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the former.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Education, Prison, School, Punishment

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

Teaching isn’t one-tenth as effective as training.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Teachers, Teaching

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

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

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Posterity, Truth, Greatness

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.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Truth

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

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

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

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

Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Truth, Progress

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate
—Horace Mann
Topics: Genius

A human being is not, in any proper sense, a human being till he is educated.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Education

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Happiness

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