Horace Mann Quotes

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them.

No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of partiotism.

It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.

No other people learn so little by example as the French. With the United States before them as the model of democracy crystallized into an effective system, the French invariably drift into anarchy or coups d’état. Their republics have had too little or too much cohesion among the parts, or they have had no parts at all; the executive has been made a cipher or a despot. They have been destroyed by the incapacity of the builders, and their ignorance of the principle of checks and balances. To establish these requires mutual sacrifices, and often a high degree of political skill; but a people who are unwilling to make sacrifices, and who can produce no statesmen, are preordained to failure.

The remedy for our social evils does not consist so much in changing the system of government as it does in increasing the general intelligence of the people so that they may learn how to govern.

I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

Educated people can make their own choices about their governments. And certainly for women, an education allows you to understand your rights.

No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice . . . . These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.

When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form

The ultimate victory of tomorrow is democracy, and through democracy with education, for no people in all the world can be kept eternally ignorant or eternally enslaved.

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.

Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.

The weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community. In a republic like ours the governing class is composed of the strong men who take the trouble to do the work of government; and if you are too timid or too fastidious or too careless to do your part in this work, then you forfeit your right to be considered one of the governing and you become one of the governed insteadone of the driven cattle of the political arena.

Why is it that the stupidest people are always the most good-natured?

I currently perform the most important political duties an American has the responsibility to perform - I experiment in self-government on a daily basis, fulfilling my "we the people" duties to monitor and guide our elected employees to adhere to their oath to the U.S. Constitution and demand accountability from them.

There is no more important task in a democracy than resolving the differences among people and finding a course of action that will be supported by a sufficient number to permit the nation to achieve a better life for all.

The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.

An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.

You said, 'How is it possible for democracy to work with an illiterate people who are dying of hunger?' But with that people we made a democracy work.