Horace Mann Quotes

Knowledge has value only insofar as it contributes to the all-round development of the whole nature of man.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

Everything in the world can be changed, my dear Florestan, but the human being.

Contemporary thinkers would say that man is continuously transcending himself.

Man's nature is fundamentally good, or perhaps it is neither good nor evil. In any case, man is something to work on. We must hold fast to this fact - man is something to work on.

The more we reduce ourselves to machines in the lower things, the more force we shall set free to use in the higher.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed

Man is born a tabula rasa; he must learn how to choose the ends that are proper for him and the means that he must adopt to attain them. All this must be done by his reason.

I'm a sucker when it comes to under-explored human potential and 'stuff that makes you be better.'

Progress is The law of life: man is not Man as yet.

Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.

Man always is perfect, or he never could become so; but he had to realise it.

Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.

... and it's always been a thing with me to feel that all men know the truth, see? ... The truth itself doesn't have a name on it. To me. Each man has to find this for himself, I think. I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be... I'm not interested in trying to say what it will be, I don't know. But I believe that good will only bring good.

Man is born only as a potential. He can become a thorn for himself and for others, he can also become a flower for himself and for others.

God Almighty created each and every one of use for a place in the world, and for the least of us to think that we were created only to be what we are and not what we can make ourselves, is to impute an improper motive to the Creator for creating is.

Education is a process by which the individual is developed into something better than he would have been without it. ... The very though seems in a way the height of presumption. For one thing, it involves the premise that some human beings can be better than others.

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

All of us need to grow continuously in our lives.

I'm for people bettering themselves, no matter who they are and where they are, doing all they can to be all they can be.

Life is about growth. People are not perfect when they're 21 years old.

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.

I prefer stories about people who are, in a sense, trying to find better versions of themselves.