John W. Gardner

“An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.”

“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.”

“Life is like a drawing without an eraser”

“Nothing can be more readily disproved than the old saw, “You can’t keep a good man down.” Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down.”

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

“For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.”

“When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.”

“The world loves talent but pays off on character.”

“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”