Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHAt various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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Grit may carry risk because it’s about putting all your eggs in one basket, to some extent.
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There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.
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I will say that if my wildest dreams come true, I will, like, wake up one day, and I will be Carol Dweck, right? Because she is like everything I want to be.
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I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.
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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.
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There are no shortcuts to true excellence.
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There are going to be peaks and valleys. You don’t want to let kids quit during a valley.
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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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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.
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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.
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I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
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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.
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There’s this really awesome theory of human motivation – that human beings all want three things. One is to be competent, one is to belong, and one is be free, as in to have choice: to not be told what to do but to choose what to do.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH






