Paralysis of leadership is due in part to the unseen grip of the special interests.
John W. GardnerRead
If you don't give your kid freedom to make choices with money, including stupid choices, he'll make plenty when he gets to college.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Teaching kids to manage money involves allowing them to make their own choices, including mistakes.
This quote suggests that giving children the freedom to make decisions about money, even if they make mistakes, is crucial for their financial literacy. If parents do not allow children to learn about managing money while they are young, they will inevitably face the consequences of poor financial choices later in life, particularly during the transition to adulthood when they are on their own and need to navigate financial responsibilities independently.
Themes
FreedomChoicesMoneyKidsFinancial Literacy
In practice
Example use cases
During a parent-teacher conference to emphasize the importance of teaching financial responsibility.
More from John W. Gardner
All quotes βMore and more Americans feel threatened by runaway technology, by large-scale organization, by overcrowding. More and more Americans are appalled by the ravages of industrial progress, by the defacement of nature, by man-made ugliness. If our society continues at its present rate to become less livable as it becomes more affluent, we promise all to end up in sumptuous misery.
John W. GardnerRead
Storybook happiness involves every form of pleasant thumb-twiddling; true happiness involves the full use of one's powers and talents.
John W. GardnerRead
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.
John W. GardnerRead
We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. 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.
John W. GardnerRead
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.
John W. GardnerRead
Similar quotes
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
John AdamsRead
[If a book were] very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read what he pleases.
Thomas JeffersonRead
... the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.
Louis L'AmourRead
Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
In general, higher education does not know how to speak for its interests. It offers a stance that is defensive, cowardly and likely to be ineffective.
Stanley FishRead
I think the success of any school can be measured by the contribution the alumni make to our national life.
John F. KennedyRead