John W. Gardner

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities — brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.

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

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.