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.
Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes.
There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure-all your life.
We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.
True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.
One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like weather.
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.
Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
