John W. Gardner Quotes

Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowe...

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six...

The world loves talent but pays off on character.

We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the pr...

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy...

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above th...

Art gropes it stalks like a hunter lost in the woods listening to itself and to everything around ...

John Milton called his school Christ College 'a stony-hearted stepmother'. The ultimate goal of th...

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

If one defines the term 'dropout' to mean a person who has given up serious effort to meet his respo...

One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his ...

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become...

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. ...

If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make ...

To sensible men every day is a day of reckoning.

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in phi...

Leaders come in many forms, with many styles and diverse qualities. There are quiet leaders and lead...

One of the reasons mature people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk fai...

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

But a society in which pluralism is not undergirded by some shared values and held together by some ...

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and di...

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.