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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

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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
Reach
Affluent
Wealth
Heap
State
Richer
Community
Garbage
States
Communities
Final
Finals
Crocus
Misery
Crocuses

More quotes by John W. Gardner

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For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
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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 man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself - and pays his psychoanalyst.
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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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If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.
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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.
John W. Gardner
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Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.
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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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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.
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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.
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The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
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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.
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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.
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True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
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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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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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All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
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.
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We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
John W. Gardner