Quotes from John W. Gardner

Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.

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.

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.

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.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

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.

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.

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

It's a staggering transition for high school students that found they could study five hours a week and make As and Bs.

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

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.

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

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.

If one defines the term 'dropout' to mean a person who has given up serious effort to meet his responsibilities, then every business office, government agency, golf club and university faculty would yield its quota.

All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.

The cynic says, "One man can't do anything". I say, "Only one man can do anything."

The man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself - and pays his psychoanalyst.

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.

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

The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.

Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.

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.