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.
Interpretation
Education serves as a powerful tool to level the playing field among individuals and society.
Horace Mann emphasizes the transformative power of education in society, arguing that it is the most effective means of promoting equality among people, regardless of their background. He suggests that education acts as a balancing force within the social system, enabling individuals to rise above their circumstances and fostering a more just and equitable society.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech at a graduation ceremony to inspire new graduates about the importance of their education.
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.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
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.
Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
When you're writing for the Internet, you have the analytics, and you know that people are bailing every second. But various people kept reminding me that once people have bought a book, they're in. You don't have to be selling them on every page.
The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.
I think of it often and imagine the scene clearly. Even if they come to kill me, I will tell them what they are trying to do is wrong, that education is our basic right.
Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction of despair.
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
Learn to write well, or not to write at all.
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