Quotes from Angela Duckworth

Most people who are really, enduringly interested in something eventually find that it's important, too - and important to other people. Very few people can keep going their whole life doing something and feel like it's merely personally fascinating.

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.

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.

There are no shortcuts to true excellence.

Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom. 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.

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.

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.

The focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right? 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.

I now have Grit Scale scores from thousands of American adults. My data provide a snapshot of grit across adulthood. And I've discovered a strikingly consistent pattern: grit and age go hand in hand. Sixty-somethings tend to be grittier, on average, than fifty-somethings, who are in turn grittier than forty-somethings, and so on.

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.

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.

Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.

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

I was a good novice teacher, but I did the things that were obvious. I stayed for lunch for extra tutoring, gave kids my cell phone, and was available. In my first year of teaching, I ended up doubling the math time that a conventional school would have. But I don't think any of these things were path-breaking or unusual.

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

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.

There haven't been genetic studies on grit, but we often think that challenge is inherited but grit is learned. That's not what science says. Science says grit comes from both nature and nurture.

Many things matter other than our measured intelligence, so let's get to work on them.

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.

When people tell me I can't do something, I have a visceral reflex to say, 'Yes, I can.'