John W. Gardner Quotes
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We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery - crocus on a garbage heap.
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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.
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Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.
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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.
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We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.
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Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests.
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History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.
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The world loves talent but pays off on character.
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Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
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An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.
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Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
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A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.
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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.
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Some people may have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly, by “doin' what comes naturally”; and they don't stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
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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.
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Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
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For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
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America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.
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Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.
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All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
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When hiring key employees, there are only two qualities to look for: judgement and taste. Almost everything else can be bought by the yard.
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What leaders have to remember is that somewhere under the somnolent surface is the creature that builds civilizations, the dreamer of dreams, the risk taker. And remembering that, the leader must reach down to the springs that never dry up, the ever-fresh springs of the human spirit.
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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.
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The man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself - and pays his psychoanalyst.
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Perhaps the most striking feature of the [nonprofit] sector is its relative freedom from constraints and its resulting pluralism.
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Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
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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.
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One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
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Perhaps the most promising trend in our thinking about leadership is the growing conviction that the purposes of the group are best served when the leader helps followers develop their own initiative, strengthens them in the use of their own judgment, enables them to grow, and to become better contributors.
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The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal.
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