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We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
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
Payment
Price
Heavy
Failure
Pay
Fear
More quotes by 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
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
For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
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
Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
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
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
John W. Gardner
The ablest and most effective leaders do not hold to a single style they may be highly supportive in personal relations when that is needed, yet capable of a quick, authoritative decision when the situation requires it.
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
To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.
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
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
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
We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure-all your life.
John W. Gardner
Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
John W. Gardner
Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
John W. Gardner
The world loves talent but pays off on character.
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
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
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
