1799-1888, American Educator, Social Reformer
A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Government]
A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Learning]
Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Conversation]
Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Analysis]
One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Quotations]
Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Dreams]
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Friends and Friendship]
Our ideals are our better selves.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Ideals and Idealism]
Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Family]
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Sympathy]
Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Success]
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Books and Reading]
The less routine the more life.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Life and Living]
The surest sign of age is loneliness.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Age and Aging]
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Teachers and Teaching]
Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Thoughts and Thinking]
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Ignorance]
We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Success]
Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Mothers]
While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
Amos Bronson Alcott – [Age and Aging]