John W. Gardner Quotes

45 Sourced Quotes

Someone said that Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

John W. Gardner
One generalization that is supported both by research and experience is that effective two-way communication is essential to proper functioning of the leader-follower relationship.

John W. Gardner
Self-discipline is the free man's yoke. Either he is his own master or he will be his own slave—not merely as slave to his passions, as an earlier generation might have feared, but a slave to his unbounded ego.

John W. Gardner
Those whose gifts fit them for leadership must recognize that a prime function of the leader is to keep hope alive.

John W. Gardner
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.

John W. Gardner
The person intent on self-renewal will have to deal with the ghosts of the past—the memory of earlier failures, the remnants of childhood dreams and rebellions, and the accumulated grievances and resentments that have long outlived their cause.

John W. Gardner
Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor.

John W. Gardner
If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

John W. Gardner
Perhaps the most promising trend in our thinking about leadership is the growing conviction that the purposes of the group are best served when the leader helps followers develop their own initiative, strengthens them in the use of their own judgment, enables them to grow, and to become better contributors.

John W. Gardner
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him.

John W. Gardner
Many of the major changes in history have come about through successive small innovations, most of them anonymous.

John W. Gardner
In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world.

John W. Gardner
The future announces itself from afar. But most people are not listening. The noisy clatter of the present drowns out the tentative sound of things to come. The sound of the new does not fit old perceptual patterns and goes unnoticed by most people. And of the few who do perceive something coming, most lack the energy, initiative, courage or will to do anything about it. Leaders who have the wit to perceive and the courage to act will be credited with a gift of prophecy that they do not necessarily have.

John W. Gardner
Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.

John W. Gardner
We may learn something about the renewal of societies if we look at the kind of men who contribute most to that outcome — the innovators.

John W. Gardner
If one defines the term 'dropout' to mean a person who has given up serious effort to meet his responsibilities, then every business office, government agency, golf club and university faculty would yield its quota.

John W. Gardner
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.

John W. Gardner
We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.

John W. Gardner
Leaders develop their styles as they interact with their constituencies. They move toward the style that seems most effective in dealing with the mixture of elements that make up their constituencies.

John W. Gardner
All that we know about the interaction between leaders and constituents or followers tells us that communication and influence flow in both directions; and in that two-way communication, nonrational, nonverbal, and unconscious elements play their part.

John W. Gardner
The man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself - and pays his psychoanalyst.

John W. Gardner
The ablest and most effective leaders do not hold to a single style; they may be highly supportive in personal relations when that is needed, yet capable of a quick, authoritative decision when the situation requires it.

John W. Gardner
The play of conflicting interests in a framework of shared purposes is the drama of a free society. It is a robust exercise, and often a noisy one. It is not for the faint-hearted, or the tidy-minded.

John W. Gardner
Whoever I am or whatever I am doing, provided that I am engaged in a socially acceptable activity, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

John W. Gardner
Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

John W. Gardner
A nation is held together by shared values, shared beliefs, shared attitudes. That is what enables a people to maintain a cohesive society despite the tensions of daily life. This is what enables them to rise above the conflicts that plague any society. That is what gives a nation its tone, its fiber, its integrity, its moral style, its capacity to endure.

John W. Gardner
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.

John W. Gardner
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.

John W. Gardner
Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.

John W. Gardner
If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure—all your life. It's as simple as that.

John W. Gardner