Horace Mann: “O, how insane and fatuous to barter the undecaying honors of the future for the transitory joys of the present!”

Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?

I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.

My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor.

Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance.