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

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.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the [nonprofit] sector is its relative freedom from constraints and its resulting pluralism.

I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.

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.

The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion.