John W. Gardner

Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests.

More and more Americans feel threatened by runaway technology, by large-scale organization, by overcrowding. More and more Americans are appalled by the ravages of industrial progress, by the defacement of nature, by man-made ugliness. If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery.

Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.

Leaders come in many forms, with many styles and diverse qualities. There are quiet leaders and leaders one can hear in the next county. Some find strength in eloquence, some in judgment, some in courage.

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.

I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.

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.

The cynic says, "One man can't do anything". I say, "Only one man can do anything."

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.

A prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.

When hiring key employees, there are only two qualities to look for: judgement and taste. Almost everything else can be bought by the yard.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

Some people seem to believe that for each problem there is a solution readily available - a solution that can be promptly achieved by passing a law and voting some money. I think of this as the vending machine concept of social change. Put a coin in the machine and out comes a piece of candy. If there is a social problem, pass a law and out comes a solution.

Some people may have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly, by “doin' what comes naturally”; and they don't stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.