110+ Horace Mann Quotes On Education, Public Education And Workers

Horace Mann was an American educator who was a strong advocate for public education reform in the mid-1800s. He argued that education should be made available to all children, regardless of their social or economic backgrounds. He was instrumental in establishing the first state-funded public school system in Massachusetts in 1837. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Horace Mann on education, public education, workers.

Top 10 Horace Mann Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
4. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
5. A house without books is like a room without windows.
6. A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
7. Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
8. A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on a cold iron.
9. 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.
10. If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.

Horace Mann Image Quotes

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. — Horace Mann

Horace Mann Short Quotes

• Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
• It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.
• Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.
• Above all, let the poor hang up the amulet of temperance in their homes.
• Habit is a cable; we weave a thread each day, and at last we cannot break it.
• Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
• Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
• It is well to think well. It is divine to act well.
• You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.
• Observation - activity of both eyes and ears.

Horace Mann Quotes About Education

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

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

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

Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man. — Horace Mann

There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls. — Horace Mann

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

If temperance prevails, then education can prevail; if temperance fails, then education must fail. — Horace Mann

When you introduce into our schools a spirit of emulation, you have present the keenest spur admissible to the youthful intellect. — Horace Mann

After a child has arrived at the legal age for attending school,-whether he be the child of noble or of peasant,-the only two absolute grounds of exemption from attendance are sickness and death. — Horace Mann

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

Horace Mann Quotes About School

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

Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing. — Horace Mann

School is the cheapest police. — Horace Mann

Horace Mann Quotes About House

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. — 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

Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! — Horace Mann

Horace Mann Quotes About Books

Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it. City libraries tell us of the reign of Jesus Christ but city streets tell us of the reign of Satan. — Horace Mann

Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield. — Horace Mann

Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life. — Horace Mann

Horace Mann Quotes About Evil

Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them. — Horace Mann

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

If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable. — 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

Evil and good are God's right hand and left. — Horace Mann

Horace Mann Famous Quotes And Sayings

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. — Horace Mann

Where a love of natural beauty has been cultivated, all nature becomes a stupendous gallery, as much superior in form and in coloring to the choicest collections of human art, as the heavens are broader and loftier than the Louvre or the Vatican. — 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

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one's self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself, gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others. — Horace Mann

In what pagan nation was Moloch ever propitiated by such an unbroken and swift-moving procession of victims as are offered to this Moloch of Christendom, intemperance. — Horace Mann

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

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

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. — 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

New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation. — Horace Mann

The false man is more false to himself than to any one else. He may despoil others, but himself is the chief loser. The world's scorn he might sometimes forget, but the knowledge of his own perfidy is undying. — Horace Mann

On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there. — 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

Ten men have failed from defect in morals, where one has failed from defect in intellect. — Horace Mann

The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man. — Horace Mann

Keep one thing in view forever- the truth; and if you do this, though it may seem to lead you away from the opinion of men, it will assuredly conduct you to the throne of God. — Horace Mann

Praise begets emulation,--a goodly seed to sow among youthful students. — Horace Mann

You may be liberal in your praise where praise is due: it costs nothing; it encourages much. — Horace Mann

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 brace every muscle to its highest tension. — Horace Mann

It would be more honourable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more. — Horace Mann

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

True glory is a flame lighted at the skies. — Horace Mann

Teaching isn't one-tenth as effective as training. — Horace Mann

As all truth is from God, it necessarily follows that true science and true religion can never be at variance. — Horace Mann

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

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

Ignorance has been well represented under the similitude of a dungeon, where, though it is full of life, yet darkness and silence reign. But in society the bars and locks have been broken; the dungeon itself is demolished; the prisoners are out; they are in the midst of us. We have no security but to teach and renovate them. — Horace Mann

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

Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise. — Horace Mann

Of all "rights" which command attention at the present time among us, woman's rights seem to take precedence. — Horace Mann

There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs. — Horace Mann

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise. — Horace Mann

Let but the public mind become once 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 the canker-worms. — Horace Mann

The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters-where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies. — Horace Mann

In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat. — 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

The most precious wine is produced upon the sides of volcanoes. Now bold and inspiring ideals are only born of a clear head that stands over a glowing heart. — Horace Mann

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

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

Even the choicest literature should be taken as the condiment, and not as the sustenance of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders. — Horace Mann

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

The devil tempts men through their ambition, their cupidity, or their appetite, until he comes to the profane swearer, whom he clutches without any reward. — Horace Mann

We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life's existence. — 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

When a child can be brought to tears, and not from fear of punishment, but from repentance he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from the grief of their conduct you can be sure there is an angel nestling in their heart. — Horace Mann

Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. — Horace Mann

When will society, like a mother, take care of all her children? — Horace Mann

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. — Horace Mann

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. — Horace Mann

Avoid witicisms at the expense of others. — Horace Mann

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. — 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

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. — 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

There is not a good work which the hand of man has ever undertaken, which his heart has ever conceived, which does not require a good education for its helper. — Horace Mann

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws. — 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

Man is improvable. Some people think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water. — Horace Mann

Whatever statesman or sage will effect reforms upon a gigantic or godlike scale must begin with the young. — Horace Mann

Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men. — Horace Mann

He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead. — Horace Mann

We do ourselves the most good doing something for others. — Horace Mann

Education must bring the practice as nearly as possible to the theory. As the children now are, so will the sovereigns soon be. — Horace Mann

The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled. — 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

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. — Horace Mann

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate. — Horace Mann

Knowledge has its boundary line, where it abuts on ignorance; on the outside of that boundary line are ignorance and miracles; on the inside of it are science and no miracles. — Horace Mann

Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed. — Horace Mann

Ideality is the avant-courier of the mind. — Horace Mann

I look upon Phrenology as the guide to philosophy and the handmaid of Christianity. Whoever disseminates true Phrenology is a public benefactor. — Horace Mann

You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it; but let all you tell be truth. — Horace Mann

Life Lessons by Horace Mann

1. Horace Mann believed that education should be available to everyone, regardless of their social class, and that it was essential for the development of a strong democracy.
2. He was a strong advocate for public education, believing that it was the responsibility of the government to ensure that everyone had access to a quality education.
3. His life lessons emphasize the importance of education and the power of knowledge to create a better society.