Horace Mann: “But despotism and wealth have almost inconceivable advantages in a contest with the honest and toiling millions.”

The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.

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.

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

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.