Quote

An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion.

Horace Mann

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Horace Mann
Age: 63 †
Born: 1796
Born: May 4
Died: 1859
Died: August 2
American Politician
Lawyer
Politician
University Teacher
Franklin
Massachusetts
Wisdom
Propositions
Able
Discrimination
Always
Require
Things
Immediately
Propounded
Men
Proportion
Discriminations
Ignorant
Comparatively
Response
Qualifications
Wise
Proposition

More quotes by Horace Mann

Image
Avoid witticisms at the expense of others.
Horace Mann
Image
Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.
Horace Mann
Image
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
Horace Mann
Image
The Chinese have an excellent proverb: Be modest in speech, but excel in action.
Horace Mann
Image
As each generation comes into the world devoid of knowledge, its first duty is to obtain possession of the stores already amassed. It must overtake its predecessors before it can pass by them.
Horace Mann
Image
Man ... has an inborn religious sentiment that whispers of a God to his inmost soul, as a shell taken from the deep yet echoes forever the ocean's roar.
Horace Mann
Image
Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.
Horace Mann
Image
In dress, seek the middle between foppery and shabbiness.
Horace Mann
Image
In what pagan nation was Moloch ever propitiated by such an unbroken and swift-moving procession of victims as are offered to this Moloch of Christendom, intemperance.
Horace Mann
Image
Benevolence is a world of itself -- a world which mankind, as yet, have hardly begun to explore. We have, as it were, only skirted along its coasts for a few leagues, without penetrating the recesses, or gathering the riches of its vast interior.
Horace Mann
Image
The soul of the truly benevolent man does not seem to reside much in his own body. Its life, to a great extent, is a mere reflex of the lives of others. It migrates into their bodies, and identifying its existence with their existence, finds its own happiness in increasing and prolonging their pleasures, in extinguishing or solacing their pains.
Horace Mann
Image
Biography, especially of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records.
Horace Mann
Image
Of all rights which command attention at the present time among us, woman's rights seem to take precedence.
Horace Mann
Image
No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth.
Horace Mann
Image
Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.
Horace Mann
Image
Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.
Horace Mann
Image
Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
Horace Mann
Image
He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.
Horace Mann
Image
Habit can overcome anything but instinct, and can greatly modify even that.
Horace Mann
Image
Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
Horace Mann