Quote

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

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Horace Mann
Age: 63 †
Born: 1796
Born: May 4
Died: 1859
Died: August 2
American Politician
Lawyer
Politician
University Teacher
Franklin
Massachusetts
Men
Conditions
Condition
Effort
Destroy
Desire
Slavery
Nature
Ambition
Bettering
Firsts
Touch
Mainspring
Human
Constitution
Enslave
Humans
Spring
Snaps
First
Capacity
Enterprise

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Common sense is better than genius, and hence its bestowment is more universal.
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Even the choicest literature should be taken as the condiment, and not as the sustenance of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders.
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After a child has arrived at the legal age for attending school,-whether he be the child of noble or of peasant,-the only two absolute grounds of exemption from attendance are sickness and death.
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We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.
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Knowledge has its boundary line, where it abuts on ignorance on the outside of that boundary line are ignorance and miracles on the inside of it are science and no miracles.
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The pulpit only teaches to be honest the market-place trains to overreaching and fraud and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.
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You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it but let all you tell be truth.
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The highest service we can perform for others is to help them help themselves.
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If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.
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The object of punishment is, prevention from evil it never can be made impulsive to good.
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He who cannot resist temptation is not a man.
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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.
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Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
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A teacher should, above all things, first induce a desire in the pupil for the acquisition he wishes to impart.
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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.
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Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.
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It is well to think well it is divine to act well.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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