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.
Interpretation
The quote questions the nature of evil and accountability, suggesting that while evil may be a part of life, it can be addressed and remedied.
Horace Mann's quote explores the complexities of defining wickedness in a world where evil is deemed inevitable. It challenges the notion of accountability by questioning whether individuals can truly be labeled as wicked if evil is an inherent part of existence. The quote emphasizes that while evil may exist, it is also subject to correction and improvement, urging a perspective of hope and responsibility in the face of moral challenges.
In practice
During a debate on morality, one might quote this to discuss the nature of accountability in society.
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.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
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.
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.
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Be calm. God awaits you at the door.
Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.
There is a flaw with words, they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment
Imagine" he said, "never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.
Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.
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