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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
Exercise
Noisy
Interest
Hearted
Society
Framework
Purpose
Purposes
Free
Minded
Conflicting
Often
Shared
Tidy
Play
Interests
Robust
Drama
Faint
More quotes by John W. Gardner
If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.
John W. Gardner
All that we know about the interaction between leaders and constituents or followers tells us that communication and influence flow in both directions and in that two-way communication, nonrational, nonverbal, and unconscious elements play their part.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
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
Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
John W. Gardner
An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.
John W. Gardner
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
Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
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
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
John W. Gardner
The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education.
John W. Gardner
If one defines the term 'dropout' to mean a person who has given up serious effort to meet his responsibilities, then every business office, government agency, golf club and university faculty would yield its quota.
John W. Gardner
We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure-all your life.
John W. Gardner
It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
John W. Gardner
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.
John W. Gardner
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
The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.
John W. Gardner
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
All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
John W. Gardner
