Horace Mann

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

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.

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.

If there is anything for which I would go back to childhood, and live this weary life over again, it is for the burning, exalting, transporting thrill and ecstasy with which the young faculties hold their earliest communion with knowledge.

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

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

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.

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.

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

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

It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government.

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