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

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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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The world loves talent but pays off on character.
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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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True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
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An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.
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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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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.
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The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
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We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
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For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
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To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.
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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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If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.
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It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
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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.
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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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Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
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All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
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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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One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
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