“There are no shortcuts to true excellence.”

At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.

You cannot will yourself to be interested in something you’re not interested in. But you can actively discover and deepen your interest.

Why do some people try, try again, and why do some people not? That’s what I’m after.

People’s lives really do turn out differently. And it certainly can’t be explained by how intelligent you remember them being when they were sitting next to you in organic chemistry class.

There’s something about taking the path of least resistance that makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, we have to figure out which things in life are worth struggling through.

Is it ‘a drag’ that passions don’t come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them?

I was a good novice teacher, but I did the things that were obvious.

Gritty people train at the edge of their comfort zone. They zero in on one narrow aspect of their performance and set a stretch goal to improve it.

Some people prefer a world where we’re all equally talented in everything. Whether you prefer that world or not, I don’t think that world exists.

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.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.

Negative feelings are typical of learning, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re stupid when you’re frustrated doing something. You might say to yourself, ‘I can’t do this,’ but you should say, ‘That’s great.’ That means you really have the potential to learn something there.

You know, the things that I want my own daughters to develop – the idea that we’re going to get there through rewards and punishments seems completely at odds with the idea of character itself.

What we reliably find is that people’s perseverance scores are actually higher than their passion scores, and I think it really does get to the fact that working hard is hard, but maybe finding your passion is even more difficult.

There are going to be peaks and valleys. You don’t want to let kids quit during a valley.

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.

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.

And there’s no question that it is a factor, but it’s preceded by the loss of resilience and degradation.

No matter what is thrown at them, no matter how deep the hole, they find a way to bounce back and overcome adversity.

Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.

No one knows the cost of a defective product – don’t tell me you do.

I have no desire at all to become the winningest coach at Notre Dame. The record belongs to Knute Rockne or some other coach in the future.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

No matter where on Earth you live. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is generated by the sea.