Hy Gardner Quotes

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

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.

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.

Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.

It wasn’t that strangers couldn’t hurt you. It was simply that the people you loved could do it so much better.

Women cry. Men laugh. Whiners moan. Men laugh. Wimps complain. Men laugh.

Youth is no excuse for sloppiness.

I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.

My secret vice is Sudoku puzzles. Can't stop playing them. My parents are accountants. I blame them entirely.

The computers are not replacing mathematicians; they are breeding them.

Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses.

Although Lewis Carroll thought of The Hunting of the Snark as a nonsense ballad for children, it is hard to imagine - in fact one shudders to imagine - a child of today reading and enjoying it.

We were taught instead of just reading about life we needed to go out and live it.

In high school, I didn't get the chance to wrestle varsity until my senior year because I had an older brother who was better than me.

If the marriage ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

People can't do something themselves, they want to tell you you can't do it. You want something, go get it.

Now listen, Lam," he said, "you’re a nice egg but you’ve got yourself poured into the wrong pan.

To write good SF today...you must push further and harder, reach deeper into your own mind until you break through into the strange and terrible country wherein live your own dreams.

We are natural mind changing entities until we are 10 or so. But as we get older...then it is very hard to change our minds

My belief in why America has been doing so well up to now is that we have been propelled by our immigrants and our encouragement of technical innovation and, indeed, creativity across the board.

I am knowledgeable enough about the world of prizes to realize that there is a large degree of luck - both for the recognitions that you receive and those that you did not.

While I’ve worked on many topics and written many books, I have not abandoned my interest in multiple intelligences.

Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.

The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.

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

The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be.

The [nonprofit] sector enhances our creativity, enlivens our communities, nurtures individual responsibility, stirs life at the grassroots, and reminds us that we were born free.

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

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

The individual who has become a stranger to himself has lost the capacity for genuine self-renewal.

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

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 greatest gift that one human being can give another is unconditional love. It's the only thing, ultimately, that really matters.

Men should spend less time with guns and more time in childbirth.

Post-apocalyptic novels tell you that in the future there is some great war. I would tell you that most cops say that it's going on right now.

Mental illness is a disease and organic mental illness of young kids is becoming more and more of a disease... we do need to talk about it.

There is nothing to fear except the power you give to your own demons.

Everybodys saying, be skeptical of Wikipedia. That is true. They should also be skeptical of everything. We should all be critical consumers of the media.

This bundle of ideas that we have held as being who we are is not actually the one who can make progress in the spiritual realm.

I couldn't imagine a better place [Australia] for making a film on the end of the world.

I never go up there trying to hit a home run

I call my putter 'Sweet Charity' because it covers such a multitude of sins from tee to green.

Fundamentalism is a kind of decision not to change your mind about something...Many of us are fundamentalists...because it worked pretty well for us.

By nature, I am not an optimist, though I try to act as if I am.

I do not care about the greatest good for the greatest number . . . Most people are poop-heads I do not care about them at all.

When I was a child I truly loved: Unthinking love as calm and deep As the North Sea. But I have lived, And now I do not sleep.

Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.

One man interacting creatively with others can move the world.

Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes.

The first and last task of aleader is to keep hope alive.