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The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
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
Tension
Institutions
Age
Sluggish
Hallmark
Aspirations
Aspiration
More quotes by John W. Gardner
To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.
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
Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.
John W. Gardner
An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.
John W. Gardner
The world loves talent but pays off on character.
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
We need more than individual value systems we need a shared vision. 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. That is what enables them to rise above the conflicts that plague any society.
John W. Gardner
Leaders develop their styles as they interact with their constituencies. They move toward the style that seems most effective in dealing with the mixture of elements that make up their constituencies.
John W. Gardner
The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.
John W. Gardner
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
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 is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
John W. Gardner
If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.
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
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
Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.
John W. Gardner
The play of conflicting interests in a framework of shared purposes is the drama of a free society. It is a robust exercise, and often a noisy one. It is not for the faint-hearted, or the tidy-minded.
John W. Gardner
The man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself - and pays his psychoanalyst.
John W. Gardner
