Amos Bronson Alcott
Birthdate: November 29, 1799
Birthplace: Wolcott, Connecticut, U.S.A.
Date of Death: March 4, 1888
Occupation: Philosopher, Teacher, and Writer
Profile: Founded a series of innovative but ultimately unsuccessful schools for children and a
short lived utopian community known as Fruitlands. Associated with the philosophy of Transcendentalism. Father
of
Louisa May Alcott.
Website: http://www.alcott.net/
Number of Quotes: 23
A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.
Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.
One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
Our dreams drench us in sense, and sense steeps us again in dreams.
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Our ideals are our better selves.
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.
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.
Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
The less routine the more life.
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust.
He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.
Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.
Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.
While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
Last on Earth
