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Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
John W. Gardner
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John W. Gardner
Age: 89 †
Born: 1912
Born: October 8
Died: 2002
Died: February 16
Author
Politician
LA
California
John William Gardner
John Gardner
Within
Whatever
Kind
Whoever
Excellence
Perfection
Reach
Stars
More quotes by John W. Gardner
We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery - crocus on a garbage heap.
John W. Gardner
In the United States, to an unprecedented degree, the individual's social role has come to be determined not by who he is but by what he can accomplish.
John W. Gardner
One exemplary act may affect one life, or even millions of lives. All those who set standards for themselves, who strengthen the bonds of community, who do their work creditably and accept individual responsibility, are building the common future.
John W. Gardner
All of us celebrate our values in our behavior.
John W. Gardner
We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes.
John W. Gardner
All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
John W. Gardner
The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.
John W. Gardner
The [nonprofit] sector is the natural home of nonmajoritarian impulses, movements and values. It comfortably harbors innovators, maverick movements, groups which feel they must fight for their place in the sun, and critics of both liberal conservative persuasion.
John W. Gardner
Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.
John W. Gardner
Nothing can be more readily disproved than the old saw, You can't keep a good man down. Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down.
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
Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.
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
What leaders have to remember is that somewhere under the somnolent surface is the creature that builds civilizations, the dreamer of dreams, the risk taker. And remembering that, the leader must reach down to the springs that never dry up, the ever-fresh springs of the human spirit.
John W. Gardner
The world loves talent but pays off on character.
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
Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
John W. Gardner
At home we have lost the capacity to see what is before us. Travel shakes us out of our apathy, and we regain an attentiveness that heightens every experience. The exhilaration of travel has many sources, but surely one of them is that we recapture in some measure the unspoiled awareness of children.
John W. Gardner
