Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John W. Gardner
Age: 89 †
Born: 1912
Born: October 8
Died: 2002
Died: February 16
Author
Politician
LA
California
John William Gardner
John Gardner
Fighting
Impulse
Comfortably
Values
Critics
Innovators
Natural
Conservative
Impulses
Place
Democratic
Harbors
Home
Sun
Persuasion
Feel
Groups
Sector
Must
Fight
Movements
Nonprofit
Feels
Movement
Liberal
Maverick

More quotes by John W. Gardner

Image
The man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself - and pays his psychoanalyst.
John W. Gardner
Image
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
John W. Gardner
Image
Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
John W. Gardner
Image
The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.
John W. Gardner
Image
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
Image
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
John W. Gardner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
John W. Gardner
Image
Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
John W. Gardner
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.
John W. Gardner
Image
All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
John W. Gardner
Image
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