John W. GardnerThinkers

The City is, in America, a city in fragments a variety of worlds wholly out of touch with each other.

Education is monumentally ineffective today because all too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.

Education's proper goal is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinary well.

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

Law is, in all cases, an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.

Learning is inextricably liked with risk. Mature people stop learning because they become less and less willing to risk failure.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

Narrative is grounded in only two stories: going on a journey and a stranger coming to town.

Poverty is a stimulator of talents, to be sure, but for every talent it has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

Psychoanalysis is responsible for the fact that the man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself, and pays his psychoanalyst.