Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
Interpretation
Pursuing truth leads to true greatness.
In this quote, Horace Mann emphasizes the importance of seeking truth rather than chasing after greatness for its own sake. He suggests that by focusing on understanding and embracing truth, one may inadvertently achieve greatness as a byproduct of this pursuit. This underscores the idea that authenticity and integrity are more valuable than the superficial accolades of success.
In practice
This quote could inspire students during a graduation speech about the importance of integrity over accolades.
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.
I would say you might encounter many defeats but you must never be defeated, ever. In fact, it might even be necessary to confront defeat. It might be necessary, to get over it, all the way through it, and go on. I would teach her to laugh a lot. Laugh a lot at the - and the silliest things and be very, very serious. I'd teach her to love life, I can bet you that.
Everyone is bound to bear patiently the results of his own example.
The trouble is that not enough people have come together with the firm determination to live the things which they say they believe.
One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.
Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.