Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.- John W. Gardner
When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.
We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
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.
The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
The cynic says, "One man can't do anything." I say, "Only one man can do anything."
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.
Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.
Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.
Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.
Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
