Horace Mann Quotes (1796-1859)

“Finally, education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.”

“He is a delightful companion and friend, and among all the excellent men whom we met in Boston, none entwined themselves more deeply and closely with our affections than Horace Mann.”

“The process did not begin with Horace Mann, although he probably did more to humanize American education in the nineteenth century than any other educator, and thus we tend to trace humanistic roots back to him. Mann was vigorously opposed by ministers of his day, who foresaw the shift from a biblical to a humanistic base for education, but their resistance was gradually overcome.”

“I would ask, if this modesty is not attractive also, when manifested in the other sex? It was strikingly marked in Horace Mann, when presiding over the late National Educational Convention in this city. The retiring modesty of William Ellery Channing was beautiful, as well as of many others who have filled elevated stations in society. These virtues, differing as they may in degree in man and woman, are of the same nature, and call forth our admiration wherever manifested.”

“Control of children and their education is control of the future. Humanists have always understood this. Horace Mann, James G. Carter, and their many associates (including Senator Charles G. Sumner) were all Unitarians; they hated the Puritan faith of their forefathers with a passion. Their purpose in promoting state control of education was twofold. First, they rightfully understood that the only way to destroy Biblical faith was to control the schools and, little by little, remove Christianity and introduce Humanism. Second, they were Centralists or statist, men who believed that salvation comes by work of statist legislation or law.”

“The 1830s, in fact, gave rise to an educational awakening, led by such reformers as Horace Mann, James G. Carter, Henry Barnard, and William Russell, all of whom used Massachusetts and other New England states as their laboratory. Their crusading helped to generate public support for common schools. Mann, acknowledged as the father of the common school movement, argued that these institutions should be publicly controlled, publicly supported, and open to all.”

“Anyone who has read anything of Horace Mann knows that he is a sort of patron saint of progressive education not only because of his ideas (very advanced for his day) about the way children should be treated, not only because he advocated a personal and humane atmosphere in the school in the relation of children and teachers, but because, above all, he was the prophet of the idea of the absolute necessity of free public education for the existence and preservation of a democratic way of life; or, as he said in the phraseology of his time, "republican institutions of self-government."”