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Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.

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
Practice
Unthinkable
Freedom
Practices
Alternatives
Requires
Consider
Creativity
Worth
Doubt
Cherished

More quotes by John W. Gardner

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A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.
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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The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.
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The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
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In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world.
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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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For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
John W. Gardner
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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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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
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Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
John W. Gardner
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Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
John W. Gardner
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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.
John W. Gardner
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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.
John W. Gardner
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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
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All of us celebrate our values in our behavior.
John W. Gardner
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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
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We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit.
John W. Gardner
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The world loves talent but pays off on character.
John W. Gardner
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We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
John W. Gardner
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The man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself - and pays his psychoanalyst.
John W. Gardner