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Horace Mann
(4 May 1796 - 2 Aug 1859)
American education reformer who has been called the father of American public education, working tirelessly as a champion of the non-privileged classes and fighting injustices in the 19th-century American educational system.
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Science Quotes by Horace Mann (16 quotes)
Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.
— Horace Mann
In Thoughts Selected From the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), 41.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
— Horace Mann
Epitaph on monument over his grave. Quoted in Thomas Williams Bicknell et al., Education (1912), 647
Education is an organic necessity of a human being.
— Horace Mann
In Thoughts Selected From the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), 235.
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
Twelfth Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1948). Life and Works of Horace Mann (1891), Vol. 4, 251.
Finally, in regard to those who possess the largest shares in the stock of worldly goods, could there, in your opinion, be any police so vigilant and effetive, for the protections of all the rights of person, property and character, as such a sound and comprehensive education and training, as our system of Common Schools could be made to impart; and would not the payment of a sufficient tax to make such education and training universal, be the cheapest means of self-protection and insurance?
— Horace Mann
Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts for the years 1839-1844, Life and Works of Horace Mann (1891), Vol. 3, 100.
If a savage will learn how to swim, he can fasten a dozen pounds’ weight to his back, and transport it across a narrow river…. If he will invent an axe … by which to cut down a tree, he can use the tree for a float, and one of its limbs for a paddle, and can thus transport many times the former weight many times the former distance.
— Horace Mann
In 'Report For 1848', Annual Reports on Education (1872), 675.
If ever there can be a cause worthy to be upheld by all toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of education.
— Horace Mann
Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), 5.
It is impossible for us adequately to conceive the boldness of the measure which aimed at universal education through the establishment of free schools. ... it had no precedent in the world's history ... But time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, as beneficient as it was disinterested. ... The establishment of free schools was one of those grand mental and moral experiments whose effects could not be developed and made manifest in a single generation. ... The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by our efforts to perpetuate and improve what they established. The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering.
— Horace Mann
Tenth Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1946). Life and Works of Horace Mann (1891), Vol. 4, 111-112.
It is supposed that the ancients were ignorant of the law in hydraulics, by which water, in a tube, will rise as high as the fountain-head; and hence they carried their stupendous aqueducts horizontally, from hill-top to hill-top, upon lofty arches, with an incredible expenditure of labor and money. The knowledge of a single law, now familiar to every well-instructed school-boy,— namely, that water seeks a level, and, if not obstructed, will find it,—enables the poorest man of the present day to do what once demanded the wealth of an empire. The beautiful fragments of the ancient Roman aqueducts, which have survived the ravage of centuries, are often cited to attest the grandeur and power of their builders. To me, they are monuments, not of their power, but of their weakness.
— Horace Mann
In Thoughts Selected From the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), 231.
Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.
— Horace Mann
'A Few Thoughts for a Young Man', Monthly Literary Miscellany (1851), Vol. 4 & 5, 155.
Teachers should be able to teach subjects, not manuals merely.
— Horace Mann
Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts for the years 1839-1844, Life and Works of Horace Mann (1891), Vol. 3, 58.
The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil to learn is hammering on cold iron.
— Horace Mann
Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), 225.
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.
— Horace Mann
In Rush Welter, American Writings on Popular Education: The Nineteenth Century (1971), 76.
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.
— Horace Mann
Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts for the years 1845-1848, Life and Works of Horace Mann (1891), Vol. 4, 228.
When will society, like a mother, take care of all her children?
— Horace Mann
Journal (31 May 1837). In Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life and Works of Horace Mann (1891), 73.
Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.
— Horace Mann
Twelfth Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1948). Life and Works of Horace Mann (1891), Vol. 4, 232-233.
Quotes by others about Horace Mann (2)
In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Mass., before a Teachers’ Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.
Horace Mann vividly pictures the power of education in his statement about the savage and transportation. Modifying his statement, it can be said: The savage can fasten only a dozen pounds on his back and swim the river. When he is educated enough to make an axe, fell a tree, and build a raft, he can carry many times a dozen pounds. As soon as he learns to rip logs into boards and build a boat, he multiplies his power a hundredfold; and when to this he adds mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other modern sciences he can produce the monster steel leviathans that defy wind, storm, and distance, and bear to the uttermost parts of the earth burdens a millionfold greater than the uneducated savage could carry across the narrow river.
In 'The Money Value of Education', Department of the Interior Bureau of Education Bulletin (1917), No. 22, 11.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
