QuotesTemple
Excellence is Doing Ordinary Things Extraordinarily Well
John W. Gardner was an American politician, author and the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson.
Politician, Author | American
Born: 1912-10-08 in Los Angeles, California, USA
Died: February 16, 2002 in Palo Alto, California, USA
The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
John W. Gardner
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
John W. Gardner
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
John W. Gardner
When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.
John W. Gardner
We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
John W. Gardner
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
John W. Gardner
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
John W. Gardner
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
John W. Gardner
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
John W. Gardner
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
John W. Gardner
For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
John W. Gardner
When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.
John W. Gardner
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
John W. Gardner
If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.
John W. Gardner
It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner