Horace Mann Quotes

People think that human beings have gotten worse, that because of the pressures that modern society puts on us, we've gotten worse, and we've gotten capable of doing more terrible things. I don't know if I necessarily think that that's true.

It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all.

I have this feeling that as time goes on, we're not getting any more civilized, and we should be. We're still running around like the days of Genghis Khan. There are so many important, better things to do and we need to encourage people to reach into the brighter side of humanity and not encourage people to continue to glorify the darker side.

Also by my earliest days, I was fascinated by a utopian vision of what the world could be like. I've thought that science could be the basis for a better world, and that's what I've been trying to do all these years.

I believe that evolution is a true account of nature, but I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society.

It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

History is the zoology of the human race.

Civilization develops man, and if he is, according to his whole character and destiny, made for development, civilization is his truly natural state …

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve

It is common to think of our own time as standing on the apex of human history.

He will be an extraordinary person, that pure American, who will be standing in my place five thousand years from today. He will have what no other human being has had in just the same richness, the inheritance of all ages, all races, all cultures…. a true superman, standing on the shoulders of those from all nations and races of the earth.

Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.

America's greatest strength has always been its hopeful vision of human progress.

We need a bold, new, positive vision for the future of our country.

There is not a new hopeful, optimistic vision of the future that I am currently aware of. Certainly, not one that has penetrated pop culture awareness in the way 'Star Trek' has.

I think generationally, as human progress does its thing, we are constantly impressed by the upcoming generation.

The march of humanity, springing as it does from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous.

When all is said and done, the only change that will make a difference is the transformation of the human heart.

Although the human heart is selfish and arrogant, so many struggle against their selfishness and learn humility; because of them, as long as there is life, there is hope that beauty lost can be rediscovered, that what has been reviled can be redeemed.

I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state.

I have been in lots of very intense life situations. I have been shot at, and I have been hungry, and I have been in solitude, and I have also briefly been behind bars. So in a way, I know the heart of men.

Humanity needs a vision of an expanding and unending future.

So foolish is the heart of man that he ever puts his hope in the future, learning nothing from his past errors and fancying that tomorrow must be better than today.