Leaders 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.

The 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.

Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.

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 cynic says, "One man can't do anything." I say, "Only one man can do anything."

All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.

Leaders 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.

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.

Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

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.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

The 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.

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

America'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.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

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 hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

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.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

The 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.

The cynic says, 'One man can't do anything.' I say, 'Only one man can do anything.'

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline like learning Latin. But the good parts are of course simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer but when Hes good nobody can touch Him.

We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery crocus on a garbage heap.

If you have some respect for people as they are you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

When hiring key employees there are only two qualities to look for judgement and taste. Almost everything else can be bought by the yard.

We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.

To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.

All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

Necessity does the work of courage.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

More firm and sure the hand of courage strikes, when it obeys the watchful eye of caution.

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.

Ronald Reagan's well documented final battles with Alzheimer's disease were fought with the same conviction and courage that his many public battles were fought.

On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.