Quote

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

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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
Play
Interests
Robust
Drama
Faint
Exercise
Noisy
Interest
Hearted
Society
Framework
Purpose
Purposes
Free
Minded
Conflicting
Often
Shared
Tidy

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All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
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An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.
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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 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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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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Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
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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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All of us celebrate our values in our behavior.
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Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes.
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True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
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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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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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Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
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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 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.
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At home we have lost the capacity to see what is before us. Travel shakes us out of our apathy, and we regain an attentiveness that heightens every experience. The exhilaration of travel has many sources, but surely one of them is that we recapture in some measure the unspoiled awareness of children.
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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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The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education.
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Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
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Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
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