Horace Mann
Horace Mann
Horace Mannwas an American politician and educational reformer. A Whig devoted to promoting speedy modernization, he served in the Massachusetts State legislature. In 1848, after serving as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education since its creation, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. Historian Ellwood P. Cubberley asserts:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth4 May 1796
CityFranklin, MA
CountryUnited States of America
Education...beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men --the balance wheel of the social machinery...It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich; it prevents being poor.
The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled.
He who cannot resist temptation is not a man.
Want of occupation is the bane of both men and women, perhaps more especially of the latter.
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.
If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
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.
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.
But let a man know that there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant, and it is so much carved out of his domain of universal knowledge.
He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.
Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men.
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.
Just in proportion as a man becomes good, divine, Christ-like, he passes out of the region of theorizing, of system-building, and hireling service, into the region of beneficent activities. It is well to think well. It is divine to act well.
Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man.