John W. Gardner Quotes

1912–2002 United States

John William Gardner (8 October 1912 – 16 February 2002) was President of the Carnegie Corporation and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under President Lyndon Johnson.

United States
Academics

Also known as: John William Gardner

Random John W. Gardner quote

8 quotes

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

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.

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.

Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961)

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.

Self Renewal (1964)

"One of the reasons why mature people are apt to learn less than young people is that they are willing to risk less. Learning is a risky business, and they do not like failure."

Self-Renewal (1964)

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.

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.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John W. Gardner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.