Those who exert the first influence upon the mind have the greatest power.
Interpretation
The people who initially shape our thoughts and beliefs have a significant impact on our lives.
This quote by Horace Mann emphasizes the importance of early influences in shaping our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Those who guide or mentor us at the outset often have a lasting effect on our development and worldview, which underscores the responsibility of educators, leaders, and parents in establishing positive directions for younger minds.
In practice
In a motivational speech about 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.
At the risk of appearing predictable, the Bible was and remains the biggest influence on my thinking. I was raised reading it, memorizing passages from it and being guided by it. I still find it a source of wisdom, comfort and encouragement.
Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that.
...I came to realize that God never shows us something we aren't ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He'll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we're ready. He will plant our feet on the path that's best for us. . . but it's up to us to do the walking.
Would you rather live your life according to the approval of others or aligned with your truth and your dreams?
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
If you will take my advice you will think little of Socrates, and a great deal more of truth.
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