- History never looks like history when you are living through it.
- 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.
- Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes.
- 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.
- We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.
- True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.
- One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
- Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.
- 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.
- Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
10 inspirational john w. gardner quotes on success
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