Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests.
John W. GardnerRead
Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
Interpretation
Excellence involves achieving outstanding results in everyday tasks.
This quote emphasizes that achieving excellence is not about performing extraordinary tasks, but rather about taking ordinary tasks and executing them with exceptional skill and dedication. It underscores the importance of diligence and attention to detail in everyday actions as the path towards true excellence.
In practice
In a motivational speech about achieving success in everyday life.
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.
Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.
I didn't even start playing the piano until I was about 13 or 14. I guess I must have had a little talent or whatever-you-call-it, but I practised regularly, and that's what counts.
If a speculator is correct half of the time, he is hitting a good average. Even being right 3 or 4 times out of 10 should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly on the ventures where he is wrong.
My dreams do not end with playing Major League Baseball.
He who wants to succeed should learn how to fight, to strive and to suffer. You can acquire a lot in life, if you are prepared to give up a lot to get it.
If you have the opportunity to go be an early employee at a company that's just going crazy, and you believe it's the next Facebook or Google, you should go join that company.
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