“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.”

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.’

I think the questions on the grit scale about not letting setbacks disappoint you, finishing what you begin, doing things with focus, I think that those are things I would aspire to or hope for for all our children.

Striving is exhausting. Sometimes I do say things like, ‘I wish I were not quite this driven to be excellent.’ It’s not a comfortable life. It’s not relaxed. I’m not relaxed as a person. I mean, I’m not unhappy. But… it’s the opposite of being comfortable.

If you are a young person who is wanting to develop a passion, you cannot expect anyone else to tell you what that passion would be.

To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.

There are so many things that kids care about, where they excel, where they try hard, where they learn important life lessons, that are not picked up by test scores.

My dad was not super-intentional in his parenting. He was very self-absorbed. I won’t say mean or selfish per se, but very self-absorbed. I think he was just thinking out loud.

Boredom is a very self-conscious emotion by definition. Interest is not. So you can actually be completely absorbed in something and, at certain points in your development, not even realize that you’re into it.

There are no shortcuts to true excellence.

We need to make sure our activities and our attitudes line up with what pleases God first and foremost. Wherever we focus our attention the most will become the driving force in our lives.

Perspective drives Performance.

Witness, eternal God! Oh, witness that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!

Just work! Don’t be driven by the outcome. Embrace the process!

Our insatiable drive to rummage deep beneath the surface of the earth is a willful expansion of our dysfunctional civilization into Nature.

Without my mother’s ambition, her drive, I doubt that on my own I would have pushed myself out of Pozzuoli and into the frightening world that was faraway Rome.

Sometimes I wish I could drive a car, but I’m gonna drive a car one day, so I don’t worry about that.

Looks like what drives me crazy Don’t have no effect on you– But I’m gonna keep on at it Till it drives you crazy, too.