Horace Mann, born in 1796 in Franklin, Massachusetts, significantly impacted American education.
Despite his impoverished, challenging youth and limited early education, he eventually graduated valedictorian from Brown University in 1819.
Mann practiced law, served in the Massachusetts Senate and contributed to key educational and social legislation.
As the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1837-1847), he advocated for public education and teacher training, establishing the first U.S. state normal school in Lexington in 1839.
He later served as Antioch College’s president until his death in 1859.
Described as tall, demanding, principled and intellectually and morally strong, Mann’s legacy is foundational to the U.S. educational system.
I have selected the best quotes by Horace Mann.
Best Horace Mann Quotes
Observation – activity of both eyes and ears. ~ Horace Mann.
In youth, the artless index of the mind. ~ Horace Mann.
Avoid witticisms at the expense of others. ~ Horace Mann.
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals. ~ Horace Mann.
Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man. ~ Horace Mann.
You may as well borrow a person’s money as his time. ~ Horace Mann.
Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice. ~ Horace Mann.
Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. ~ Horace Mann.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. ~ Horace Mann.
Those who exert the first influence upon the mind have the greatest power. ~ Horace Mann.
Do not think of knocking out another person’s brains because he differs in opinion from you. ~ Horace Mann.
Unique Harley Quinn Quotes
Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care. ~ Horace Mann.
Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge. ~ Horace Mann.
Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise. ~ Horace Mann.
Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing. ~ Horace Mann.
On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it. ~ Horace Mann.
Habit can overcome anything but instinct, and can greatly modify even that. ~ Horace Mann.
Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night. ~ Horace Mann.
Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown, – or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws. ~ Horace Mann.
If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it. ~ Horace Mann.
It is well to think well; it is divine to act well. ~ Horace Mann.
Public Education is the cornerstone of our community and our democracy. ~ Horace Mann.
Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! ~ Horace Mann.
Inspiring Horace Mann Quotes
Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth. ~ Horace Mann.
Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power. ~ Horace Mann.
No man has the right to bring up children without surrounding them with books. ~ Horace Mann.
Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former. ~ Horace Mann.
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year. ~ Horace Mann.
Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. ~ Horace Mann.
On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there. ~ Horace Mann.
They who set an example make a highway. Others follow the example, because it is easier to travel on a highway than over untrodden grounds. ~ Horace Mann.
Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge. ~ Horace Mann.
Top Horace Mann Quotes
We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life’s existence. ~ Horace Mann.
We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital. ~ Horace Mann.
Lost – yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever. ~ Horace Mann.
A house without books is like a room without windows. ~ Horace Mann.
He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise. ~ Horace Mann.
It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one. ~ Horace Mann.
Ideality is the avant-courier of the mind. ~ Horace Mann.
Profound Horace Mann Quotes
Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both. ~ Horace Mann.
We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast. ~ Horace Mann.
If temperance prevails, then education can prevail; if temperance fails, then education must fail. ~ Horace Mann.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. ~ Horace Mann.
Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins. ~ Horace Mann.
He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place. ~ Horace Mann.
I hold Education to be an organic necessity of a human being. ~ Horace Mann.
Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications. ~ Horace Mann.
Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen. ~ Horace Mann.
Famous Horace Mann Quotes
We do ourselves the most good doing something for others. ~ Horace Mann.
To know the machine one must know where each part belongs, and what its office is. ~ Horace Mann.
False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse. ~ Horace Mann.
You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it; but let all you tell be truth. ~ Horace Mann.
There is nothing so costly as ignorance. ~ Horace Mann.
School is the cheapest police. ~ Horace Mann.
To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike. ~ Horace Mann.
Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men. ~ Horace Mann.
Popular Horace Mann Quotes
Love not only occupies the higher lobes of the brain, but crowds out the lower to make room for its expansion. ~ Horace Mann.
Deeds survive the doers. ~ Horace Mann.
Teaching isn’t one-tenth as effective as training. ~ Horace Mann.
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it. ~ Horace Mann.
Knowledge is a mimic creation. ~ Horace Mann.
He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. ~ Horace Mann.
Every event in this world is the effect of some precedent cause, and also the cause of some subsequent effect. ~ Horace Mann.
Inspirational Horace Mann Quotes
Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity. ~ Horace Mann.
He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead. ~ Horace Mann.
It would be more honorable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more. ~ Horace Mann.
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron. ~ Horace Mann.
A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated. ~ Horace Mann.
If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen. ~ Horace Mann.
The highest service we can perform for others is to help them help themselves. ~ Horace Mann.
The best teachers teach from the heart, not the book. ~ Horace Mann.
Thoughtful Horace Mann Quotes
The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled. ~ Horace Mann.
Every nerve that can thrill with pleasure, can also agonize with pain. ~ Horace Mann.
The most important ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with other people. ~ Horace Mann.
Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken. ~ Horace Mann.
Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves. ~ Horace Mann.
The most ignorant are the most conceited. ~ Horace Mann.
So these were the 77 top Horace Mann quotes about public education from the American father of education.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Joe Biden quotes and Harley Quinn quotes.
