John W. Gardner

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

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

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.