John W. Gardner

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit.”