John W. Gardner
An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.Collection: Education
Nothing can be more readily disproved than the old saw, "You can't keep a good man down." Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down.Collection: Men
Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.Collection: Excellence
Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.Collection: Education
We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit.Collection: Men
The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion.Collection: Life
The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal.Collection: Self
Perhaps the most striking feature of the [nonprofit] sector is its relative freedom from constraints and its resulting pluralism.Collection: Nonprofits
But if we believe what we profess concerning the worth of the individual, then the idea of individual development within a framework of ethical purpose must become our deepest concern, our national preoccupation, our passion, our obsession. We must think of education as relevant for everyone everywhere - at all ages and in all conditions of life.Collection: Life
If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.Collection: Leadership
It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.Collection: Children
One exemplary act may affect one life, or even millions of lives. All those who set standards for themselves, who strengthen the bonds of community, who do their work creditably and accept individual responsibility, are building the common future.Collection: Character
We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.Collection: Failure
To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.Collection: Karma
Creativity requires the freedom to consider 'unthinkable' alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices. Every organization, every society is under the spell of assumptions so familiar that they are never questioned, least of all by those most intimately involved.Collection: Art
More and more Americans feel threatened by runaway technology, by large-scale organization, by overcrowding. More and more Americans are appalled by the ravages of industrial progress, by the defacement of nature, by man-made ugliness. If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery.Collection: Nature
Some people seem to believe that for each problem there is a solution readily available - a solution that can be promptly achieved by passing a law and voting some money. I think of this as the vending machine concept of social change. Put a coin in the machine and out comes a piece of candy. If there is a social problem, pass a law and out comes a solution.Collection: Believe
I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.Collection: Change
All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.Collection: Discipline
We need more than individual value systems; we need a shared vision. A nation is held together by shared values, shared beliefs, shared attitudes. That is what enables a people to maintain a cohesive society despite the tensions of daily life. That is what enables them to rise above the conflicts that plague any society.Collection: Attitude
We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.Collection: Islands
Leaders develop their styles as they interact with their constituencies. They move toward the style that seems most effective in dealing with the mixture of elements that make up their constituencies.Collection: Moving
One man interacting creatively with others can move the world.Collection: Moving
The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.Collection: Creative
Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.Collection: Running
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him.Collection: Latin
The play of conflicting interests in a framework of shared purposes is the drama of a free society. It is a robust exercise, and often a noisy one. It is not for the faint-hearted, or the tidy-minded.Collection: Drama
All that we know about the interaction between leaders and constituents or followers tells us that communication and influence flow in both directions; and in that two-way communication, nonrational, nonverbal, and unconscious elements play their part.Collection: Communication
In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world.Collection: Artist
Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.Collection: Happiness
If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery.Collection: Promise
There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure-all your life.Collection: Failure
The [nonprofit] sector is the natural home of nonmajoritarian impulses, movements and values. It comfortably harbors innovators, maverick movements, groups which feel they must fight for their place in the sun, and critics of both liberal conservative persuasion.Collection: Home
One generalization that is supported both by research and experience is that effective two-way communication is essential to proper functioning of the leader-follower relationship.Collection: Communication
In the United States, to an unprecedented degree, the individual's social role has come to be determined not by who he is but by what he can accomplish.Collection: United States
Americans have always believed that-within the law-all kinds of people should be allowed to take the initiative in all kinds of activities. And out of that pluralism has come virtually all of our creativity. Freedom is real only to the extent that there are diverse alternatives.Collection: Real
Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests.Collection: Special
The ablest and most effective leaders do not hold to a single style; they may be highly supportive in personal relations when that is needed, yet capable of a quick, authoritative decision when the situation requires it.Collection: Decision