Horace Mann Quotes

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

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.

As an innovation… the establishment of Free Schools was the boldest ever promulgated, since the commencement of the Christian era… Time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, as beneficient as it was disinterested. It was one of those grand mental and moral experiments… The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by our efforts to perpetuate and improve what they established. The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering.

Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.

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

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

It is far more difficult, I assure you, to live for the truth than to die for it.

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

Observation – activity of both eyes and ears.

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.

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.

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.