The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
~ John W. Gardner
But a society in which pluralism is not undergirded by some shared values and held together by some measure of mutual trust simply cannot survive. Pluralism that reflects no commitments whatever to the common good is pluralism gone berserk... ..Leaders unwilling to seek mutually workable arrangements within systems to their own are not surviving the long-term interest of their constituents
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.
The world loves talent but pays off on character.
Art gropes it stalks like a hunter lost in the woods listening to itself and to everything around it unsure of itself waiting to pounce.
One of the reasons mature people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy and it always feels uncomfortable.
To sensible men every day is a day of reckoning.
It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.
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.
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
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.
For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make plenty when he gets to college.
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.
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.
Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.
