John W. Gardner

There is always, always, always something to be thankful for.

Buy what thou hast no Need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy Necessaries.

I’m slipping. I’m made of departed dreams and a stubborn fog that feels nothing like a veil.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Those who marry for money end up EARNING it anyway.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Know your goal, make a plan and pull the trigger.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

Opportunities are usually disguised by hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.

Many people seem to believe that Greenfield Village and the Edison Institute and Museum at Dearborn, with their specimens of earlier type of American life and industry, are just a kind of antiquarian hobby of mine. I do not deny that they have given me a great deal of interest and pleasure. But the project is vastly more than a hobby. It has very definite purposes, and I hope will have results lasting down the years. One purpose is to remind the public who visit it and sometimes there are thousands a day–of how farand how fast we have come in technical progress in the last century or so. If we have come so far and so fast, is it likely that we shall stop now?

If you want to change the world, start with the next person who comes to you in need.