Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men–the balance-wheel of the social machinery.

Finally, in regard to those who possess the largest shares in the stock of worldly goods, could there, in your opinion, be any police so vigilant and effetive, for the protections of all the rights of person, property and character, as such a sound and comprehensive education and training, as our system of Common Schools could be made to impart; and would not the payment of a sufficient tax to make such education and training universal, be the cheapest means of self-protection and insurance?

If ever there can be a cause worthy to be upheld by all toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of education.

It is impossible for us adequately to conceive the boldness of the measure which aimed at universal education through the establishment of free schools. ... it had no precedent in the world's history ... But time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, as beneficient as it was disinterested. ... The establishment of free schools was one of those grand mental and moral experiments whose effects could not be developed and made manifest in a single generation. ... The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by our efforts to perpetuate and improve what they established. The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering.

Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.

Teachers should be able to teach subjects, not manuals merely.

The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil to learn is hammering on cold iron.

There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.

Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.

When will society, like a mother, take care of all her children?

Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.