Born: 1912-10-08
Profession: Educator
Nation: American
Biography of John W. Gardner
I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.
Tags: Education, Today, WonderLeaders 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.
Tags: Courage, Next, StrengthTrue happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.
Tags: Happiness, Motivational, PowerLife is the art of drawing without an eraser.
Tags: Art, Experience, LifeThe 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.
Tags: Good, Humble, SocietySome people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.
Tags: Society, StrengthenMuch 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.
Tags: Education, Giving, TodayThe 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.
Tags: Education, Goal, SchoolWhen one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.
Tags: Government, May, PoliticsThe creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.
Tags: Accept, Creative, FreePolitical 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.
Tags: Conviction, Political, SimpleWe are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
Tags: Great, Problems, SeriesFor every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
Tags: Politics, Poverty, TalentExcellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
Tags: Excellence, OrdinaryWhoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
Tags: Excellence, Whatever, WithinThe idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.
Tags: Free, Goal, LifeIf you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.
Tags: Become, Helping, RespectOne of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
Tags: Become, Failure, LearningOur problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
Tags: Faithful, Problem, ValuesIt is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
Tags: Government, Hard, RespectAll laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.
Tags: Attempt, Laws, NaturalThe cynic says, 'One man can't do anything.' I say, 'Only one man can do anything.'
Tags: Cynic, SaysSome people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.
Tags: Excellence, Few, GreatnessThe hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
Tags: Age, Between, TensionAmerica's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.
Tags: America, Free, FreedomVisit partners pages
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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.
Tags: Integrity, Men, MoralMental illness is a disease and organic mental illness of young kids is becoming more and more of a disease... we do need to talk about it.
Tags: Kids, Talk, YoungBefore I became a suspense novelist, I wrote romantic suspense as Alicia Scott.
Tags: Novelist, Romantic, SuspenseI have a huge author crush on Stephen King. Have never met him. Would probably embarrass myself. But it would be worth it.
Tags: Crush, Him, WorthI loved ghost stories, creaky staircases, stormy nights. If it guaranteed nightmares I read it by flashlight, after midnight.
Tags: After, Loved, ReadI think one of the appeals of suspense is to safely explore our innermost fears.
Tags: Explore, Fears, SuspenseI'm not the most detailed writer. I have a tendency to be more action-oriented vs. descriptive.
Tags: Detailed, Tendency, WriterIt is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.
Tags: Difficult, Men, WomenMy secret vice is Sudoku puzzles. Can't stop playing them. My parents are accountants. I blame them entirely.
Tags: Blame, Parents, SecretPost-apocalyptic novels tell you that in the future there is some great war. I would tell you that most cops say that it's going on right now.
Tags: Future, Great, WarWhen you're on book tours, you definitely need chocolate. At all times.
Tags: Book, Chocolate, TimesAll I've really ever done is write since I was 17, so I don't know anything about anything. For me to do a novel, I have to talk to people who know things. And what keeps me in suspense is that I am a crime aficionado.
Tags: Done, Talk, WriteI don't know much about international policing and I would love to learn more. Especially in this day and age when the Internet is rapidly reducing borders and crime can happen on a larger scale than ever before. These things intrigue me.
Tags: Age, Happen, LoveI like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.
Tags: Past, Strong, WritingI still like the relationship part of any story. You don't want your character to figure everything out and then at the end of the day, go home and eat soup from a can by herself.
Tags: Character, End, HomeI still read romance, and I read suspense. I read them both. And part of it is, I like stories with strong characters, and I like stories where there's closure at the end. And I like stories where there's hope. That's a kind of empowerment. I think romance novels are very empowering, and I think suspense novels are, too.
Tags: End, Hope, StrongI'm unique for a suspense author in that I don't have a specialty background. A lot of suspense writers used to be lawyers or crime beat reporters. I didn't even know a cop when I started out. I finally figured out that I could visit prisons - I just had to be willing to make the phone calls.
Tags: Started, Unique, UsedI'm very intrigued by e-books, the topic du jour in the industry today. As a number one bestselling Kindle author, I love the way e-books make an author's backlist accessible to new readers. Of course, price point remains a source of concern. Personally, I don't have any of the answers, but I'm intrigued by the questions.
Tags: Love, Point, TodayIt's kind of the yin and yang that fascinate me. That for all the evil men do, there are also people who work obnoxiously long hours and sacrifice their personal lives because it is a calling - if they don't keep our streets safe, if they aren't there to advocate for and save beaten women and children and murder victims, who will?
Tags: Men, Women, WorkWe're all in this together - when one writer succeeds, all writers succeed. I love discovering new authors. I think we need to take care of each other and talk about craft and nurture talent.
Tags: Care, Love, TogetherWhat I loved about romances was the character, and I think I still bring that to my novels. What romance taught me was that the 'who' will always matter more than the 'what.' It's fun to come up with plots, but I want to make sure the reader cares about who it's happening to.
Tags: Character, Fun, MatterWhen I got my very first phone call that I'd hit the 'New York Times' list, I had a small rush of 'I've made it!' But the next morning, it occurred to me I didn't know what it was, so I called my agent and asked what being a 'New York Times' bestselling author really meant. He informed me that I was now a thousand pound gorilla.
Tags: Morning, Small, TimesWhen it comes to locations, I'm one of those crazy authors who has to see it, touch it, taste it, before I trust myself to recreate it for my readers. Having said that, visiting a locked-down pediatric psych ward was the most intimidating research I've ever done - and I've visited maximum security prisons, shooting galleries, bone collections, etc.
Tags: Crazy, Done, Trust