John William Gardner Quotes (10 Quotes)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. This is what enables them to rise above the conflicts that plague any society. That is what gives a nation its tone, its fiber, its integrity, its moral style, its capacity to endure.

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.

When a top executive is selecting his key associates, there are only two qualities for which he should be willing to pay almost any price taste and judgment. (Almost everything else can be bought by the yard.)

Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.

Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.

A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.