John W. Gardner

“Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.”

“True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.”

“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.”

“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”

“The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his own education.”

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

“Excellence is doing a common thing in an uncommon way.”

“History never looks like history when you are living through it.”

“The first and last task of a leader is to keep hope alive.”

“One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.”

“Much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.”

“Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life.”

“Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”

“The best-kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than enjoy a pampered idleness.”

“Most ailing organizations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects. They are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems but because they cannot see their problems.”

“We are what we are and we are where we are because we have first imagined it.”