We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure.
All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.
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.
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education.
The 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.
The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal.
One exemplary act may affect one life, or even millions of lives. All those who set standards for themselves, who strengthen the bonds of community, who do their work creditably and accept individual responsibility, are building the common future.
To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.
For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.
Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.
It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.
The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.
Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
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.
Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.
Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.
All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
Much 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.
When hiring key employees, there are only two qualities to look for: judgement and taste. Almost everything else can be bought by the yard.