Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the desire to spread knowledge widely and accessibly, similar to how seeds are scattered for growth.
Horace Mann emphasizes the importance of education and knowledge by comparing the distribution of libraries to the act of sowing seeds in a field. Just as a sower spreads seeds to ensure a bountiful harvest, Mann wishes to see libraries, symbols of knowledge and learning, scattered across the land so that everyone has access to education and the opportunity for growth.
In practice
In a speech advocating for community funding for libraries, this quote can emphasize the importance of education access.
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.
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
The student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.
I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.
If you are open-minded and ready to learn, there are many things which you can learn not only from books and instructors but from the very life experience itself.
At Chicago I offer a course on Emotion, Reason and the Law that law students just love. But I am not there as a lawyer, my job is to teach philosophy.
Capture your reader, let him not depart, from dull beginnings that refuse to start
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