“It’s also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you’re not really going to get anywhere. You’ll never become an expert.”

Drive is something that can be encouraged by a wonderful teacher, by a terrific classroom environment, by an awesome soccer team that you are on, and it can be squashed as well.

I stayed for lunch for extra tutoring, gave kids my cell phone, and was available. In my first year of teaching,

As our knees and hips and eyesight deteriorate, we become more dependable, less impulsive, kinder, and less moody.

I didn’t tell my kids, ‘You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.’ They chose these things on their own, and I don’t think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.

Many, many individuals will report starting to form their lifelong interests around adolescence. Why that is, researchers don’t fully know. But if you can take a trip down memory lane and see what interested you, that’s at least a clue as to where your interest may begin to develop.

It is important to realize that the process of ‘fostering’ a passion takes trial and error. It takes experience; you cannot do it all in your head. And it takes a long time.

We have found a direct correlation between grit and positive emotions, but the fact that I have no evidence that grit is bad for you doesn’t mean it’s not. It’s always a possibility that in the future researchers will discover a downside to grit.

I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.

Grittier soldiers are more likely to complete their training, and grittier salespeople are more likely to keep their jobs. The more challenging the domain, the more grit seems to matter.

Being gritty doesn’t mean not showing pain or pretending everything is O.K. In fact, when you look at healthy and successful and giving people, they are extraordinarily meta-cognitive. They’re able to say things like, ‘Dude, I totally lost my temper this morning.’ That ability to reflect on yourself is signature to grit.

So when my daughter told me on the second track meet that she was done with it because she discovered she didn’t like competing, I made her finish the season.

The focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right?

People who are really gritty – they’re still interested.

Most people who are really, enduringly interested in something eventually find that it’s important, too – and important to other people.

Grit and self-control are related, but they’re not the same thing.

When people tell me I can’t do something, I have a visceral reflex to say, ‘Yes, I can.’

The point is not to convert anyone to our view, but rather to help people wake to their own view, their own sanity.

Anyone who reaches for great expression has to be careful of the ridiculous.

If anyone wants to know why three kids in one family made it to the big leagues they just had to know how we helped each other and how much we practiced back then. We did it every minute we could.

We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.

Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.

Multiple Bentleys isn’t making anyone ‘financially set.’

The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, – this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.

He is stronger than anyone I know, and warmer than anyone else realizes; he is a secret that I have kept, and will keep for the rest of my life.