I believe kids should choose what they want to do, because it’s their life, but they have to choose something, and they can’t quit in the middle unless there’s a really good reason.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.
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Is it ‘a drag’ that passions don’t come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them?
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I know that instructional time is a zero-sum game, but if we want kids to do well academically, it’s hard to imagine that happening if they don’t have some control over their attention.
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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.
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Most people who are really, enduringly interested in something eventually find that it’s important, too – and important to other people.
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One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.
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I think it’s very important to send the message that, while parents are needed to remind you to practice and occasionally force you to finish things… they also need to learn to respect you. You as an individual, ultimately, are the captain of where you’re going.
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There are no shortcuts to true excellence.
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Really, what matters in the long run is sticking with things and working daily to get better at them.
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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.
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I’m not a policy oriented person. I’m constrained to what I study. But educational policy has not yet taken adequate note of the whole child. Kids are not just their IQ or standardized test scores. It matters whether or not they show up, how hard they work.
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Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
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I was a good novice teacher, but I did the things that were obvious.
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One thing that’s true of gritty people is they love what they do, and they keep loving what they do. So they’re not just in love for a day or a week.
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Every day, parents and teachers ask me, ‘How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?’ The honest answer is, I don’t know.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH






