A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.
Horace Mann

A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.
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

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Horace Mann

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
Horace Mann

Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
Horace Mann

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.
Horace Mann

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.
Horace Mann

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.
Horace Mann

Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
Horace Mann


Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.
Horace Mann

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
Horace Mann

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
Horace Mann

If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.
Horace Mann

It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.
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

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

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

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
Horace Mann

Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.
Horace Mann