Famous John Gardner Quotations

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"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
by John Gardner
"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his own education"
by John Gardner
"History never looks like history when you are living through it."
by John W. Gardner
"All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species."
by John W. Gardner
"I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive."
by John W. Gardner
"If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make plenty when he gets to college."
by John Gardner
"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."
by John W. Gardner
"Leaders come in many forms, with many styles and diverse qualities. There are quiet leaders and leaders one can hear in the next county. Some find strength in eloquence, some in judgment, some in courage."
by John W. Gardner
"Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality."
by John W. Gardner
"Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents."
by John W. Gardner
"The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept."
by John W. Gardner
"The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life."
by John W. Gardner
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
by John W. Gardner
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy...neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
by John W. Gardner
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy...neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
by John W. Gardner
"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else."
by John W. Gardner
"True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents."
by John W. Gardner
"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."
by John W. Gardner
"When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
by John W. Gardner
"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."
by John W. Gardner
"We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. 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."
by John W. Gardner
"Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Few have excellence thrust upon them. . . . They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly by doing what comes naturally and they don't stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose."
by John W. Gardner
"I've watched a lot of mid-career people, and Yogi Berra says you can observe a lot just by watching. I've concluded that most people enjoy learning and growing. And many are dearly troubled by the self-assessments of mid-career. Such self-assessments are no great problem at your age. You're young and moving up. The drama of your own rise is enough. But when you reach middle age, when your energies aren't what they used to be, then you'll begin to wonder what it all added up to; you'll begin to look for the figure in the carpet of your life. I have some simple advice for you when you begin that process. Don't be too hard on yourself. Look ahead. Someone said that Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. And above all don't imagine that the story is over. Life has a lot of chapters."
by John W. Gardner
"Although leadership and the exercise of power are distinguishable activities, they overlap and interweave in important ways. Consider a corporate chief executive officer who has the gift for inspiring and motivating people, who has vision, who lifts the spirits of employees with a resulting rise in productivity and quality of product, and a drop in turnover and absenteeism. That is leadership. But evidence emerges that the company is falling behind in the technology race. One day with the stroke of a pen the CEO increases the funds available to the research division. That is the exercise of power. The stroke of a pen could have been made by an executive with none of the qualities one associates with leadership."
by John W. Gardner
"For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred."
by John W. Gardner
"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems."
by John W. Gardner
"Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality."
by John W. Gardner
"We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery - crocus on a garbage heap."
by John W. Gardner
"Although leadership and the exercise of power are distinguishable activities, they overlap and interweave in important ways. Consider a corpor..."
by John W. Gardner


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