The [nonprofit] sector is the natural home of nonmajoritarian impulses, movements and values. It comfortably harbors innovators, maverick movements, groups which feel they must fight for their place in the sun, and critics of both liberal conservative persuasion.

If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.

In the United States, to an unprecedented degree, the individual's social role has come to be determined not by who he is but by what he can accomplish.

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.

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.

Some people may have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly, by “doin' what comes naturally”; and they don't stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.

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