I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThere’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.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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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.
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I don’t think that every child in America is going to necessarily aspire to, you know, a four-year degree from a liberal arts college or a certain kind of life. I think that people should learn to be excellent in the thing that they choose to do.
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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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If you’re never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you’ll never get better.
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When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.
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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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During all my undergrad years and in high school, I was involved in tutoring and public service. At Harvard, I spent over 35 hours a week doing service. I was a Big Sister, I worked for the homeless, the elderly; it was the epicenter of my focus.
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I now have Grit Scale scores from thousands of American adults. My data provide a snapshot of grit across adulthood.
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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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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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Substituting nuance for novelty is what experts do, and that is why they are never bored.
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When people tell me I can’t do something, I have a visceral reflex to say, ‘Yes, I can.’
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To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
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I stayed for lunch for extra tutoring, gave kids my cell phone, and was available. In my first year of teaching,
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Grit and self-control are related, but they’re not the same thing.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH