71 quotes
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.
Lectures on Education (1855)
The pulpit only "teaches" to be honest; the market-place "trains" to over-reaching and fraud; and "teaching" has not a tithe of the efficiency of "training". Christ never wrote a "Tract" in his life, but he went about doing good.
I affirm, in words as true and literal as any that belong to geometry, that the man who withholds knowledge from a child not only works diabolical miracles for the destruction of good, but for the creation of evil also.
Congressional speech (1849)
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.
The creation is a museum, all full, and crowded with wonders and beauties and glories. One door, and one only is open, by which you can enter this magnificent temple. It is the door of Knowledge. The learned laborer, the learned peasant, or slave, is ever made welcome at this door, while the ignorant, though kings, are shut out.
Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1867)
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
Misattributed
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.
Misattributed
Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.
Misattributed
Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us.
Misattributed
If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.
Misattributed
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.
Misattributed