Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Horace MannRead
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.
Interpretation
Education transforms human nature into skilled and knowledgeable individuals.
This quote emphasizes the vital role of education in shaping individuals and society. Horace Mann argues that through education, people can develop into various roles such as inventors, scholars, and ethical leaders, ultimately contributing to the betterment of humanity. It highlights education as a powerful tool in refining the raw potential of individuals, allowing them to contribute meaningfully to society.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire young students about their future.
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.
Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.
The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.
But because we've all been readers, we know what the experience is like, and we hope that what certain writers have given to us, we will give to someone.
The films I've made for children have been my hardest work, my best, because kids deserve the best.
Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.
A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.
My purpose... to go on with my heart and soul, devoting all my energies to Girl Scouts, and heart and hand with them, we will make our lives and the lives of the future girls happy, healthy and holy.
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