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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
Humans
Spring
Snaps
First
Capacity
Enterprise
Men
Conditions
Condition
Effort
Destroy
Desire
Slavery
Nature
Ambition
Bettering
Firsts
Touch
Mainspring
Human
Constitution
Enslave

More quotes by Horace Mann

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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.
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A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.
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No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth.
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If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education.
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In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.
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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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The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled.
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One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command.
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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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Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
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There is nothing so costly as ignorance.
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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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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.
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It would be more honourable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more.
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Of all rights which command attention at the present time among us, woman's rights seem to take precedence.
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School is the cheapest police.
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The most precious wine is produced upon the sides of volcanoes. Now bold and inspiring ideals are only born of a clear head that stands over a glowing heart.
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Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.
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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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You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it but let all you tell be truth.
Horace Mann