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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

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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
Thing
Beings
Inconvenient
Always
Modern
Employed
World
Rich
Devices
Difficult
Clever
Running
Variety
Stratagems
Away
Particularly
Billing
Human
Enormous
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Humans
Oneself
Josh

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In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world.
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We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
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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.
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All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
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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
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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.
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Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.
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True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
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The [nonprofit] sector enhances our creativity, enlivens our communities, nurtures individual responsibility, stirs life at the grassroots, and reminds us that we were born free.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.
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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.
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All of us celebrate our values in our behavior.
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It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.
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One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
John W. Gardner
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An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.
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Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
John W. Gardner