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.
The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.
Life is an endless process of self-discovery.
We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Americans have always believed that-within the law-all kinds of people should be allowed to take the initiative in all kinds of activities. And out of that pluralism has come virtually all of our creativity. Freedom is real only to the extent that there are diverse alternatives.
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.
The man who once cursed his fate, now curses himself – and pays his psychoanalyst.
Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests.
If the modern leader doesn’t know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.
We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery – crocus on a garbage heap.
It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.
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.
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.
In the United States, to an unprecedented degree, the individual’s social role has come to be determined not by who he is but by what he can accomplish.
Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes.