Quotes About Talent

What I have achieved by industry and practice, anyone else with tolerable natural gift and ability can also achieve.

Happiness is a talent.

Because all the brilliant ones- they can sing it and they can paint it, but they can't do it. You can't expect them to love you.

I was, if you like, a successful schoolboy in that I had a degree of talent in all the required things that make you a success at school.

van Vogt is not a giant as often maintained. He's only a pygmy using a giant typewriter

Why do you do it?' asked Drusher. 'And don't say "because someone must" or anything like that.' 'Why are you a magos biologis, Drusher, when that calling has apparently given you a life you resent?' 'Because I'm good at it,' said Drusher. 'Yes', said Eisenhorn. 'It's sad, isn't it?

Art Contest

I can't wait to start something up myself that is actually about giving unsigned bands the exposure they deserve, especially when they travel so far to play the smallest gig they've ever played in their lives.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to talk about a phenomenon called a "bozo explosion," by which a company's mediocre early hires rise up through the ranks and end up running departments. The bozos now must hire other people, and of course they prefer to hire bozos.

Just because you have the ability to do something does not mean that it is well-suited to you.

The most common mistake people make in choosing a career is to do something simply because they are good at it.

The CEO's greatest influence on the company isn't her contributions to the product, the strategy, or even getting the company funded. The CEO's greatest contribution to the company is the wizardry required to hire a team that is going to be amazingly effective at executing the company's strategy. Great CEOs hire teams that are far better than they have any right to expect. Put succinctly, a core competency for a CEO is to "date up." This

I tried to go out for theater or theater arts, but I was too scared or too intimidated. But I had a lot of friends on the cross country team that had great senses of humor.

We don't do things we aren't good at by nature. I wouldn't play basketball because I'm only 5' 1". Find what you enjoy - whether it's racing, flying a helicopter, being a doctor, or stitching clothes together. Once you've done that, you have the passion you need.

The antidote to color, to all the crap going through the minds of the people behind that casting table, is to sing so well that people go, Oh shit. You have to overcome the visual. You have to make the visual irrelevant. You have to overcome aurally. I knocked it out of the park in certain roles, and people suddenly thought, Where's this guy been? Well, I've been right here, incognegro.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire good PR.

To get the best out of a man go to what is best in him.

If you were to visit a dozen talent hotbeds tomorrow, you would be struck by how much time the learners spend observing top performers.

This is not to say that being born late into a big family automatically makes someone fast, any more than having a parent die early in life automatically makes one prime minister of England. But it does say that being fast, like any talent, involves a confluence of factors that go beyond genes and that are directly related to the intense, subconscious reaction to motivational signals that provide the energy to practice deeply and thus grow myelin.

This book is about a simple idea: Clarissa and the talent hotbeds are doing the same thing. They have tapped into a neurological mechanism in which certain patterns of targeted practice build skill. Without realizing it, they have entered a zone of accelerated learning that, while it can't quite be bottled, can be accessed by those who know how. In short, they've cracked the talent code.

over the course of years, step by step, wrap by wrap. Seen this way, the superstars on Eisenstadt's list are not uniquely gifted exceptions, but rather the logical extensions of the same universal principles that govern all of us: (1) talent requires deep practice; (2) deep practice requires vast amounts of energy; (3) primal cues trigger huge outpourings of energy.

1) talent requires deep practice; (2) deep practice requires vast amounts of energy; (3) primal cues trigger huge outpourings of energy.

Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals. The story of skill and talent is the story of myelin.

Growing skill, as we've seen, requires deep practice. But deep practice isn't a piece of cake: it requires energy, passion, and commitment. In a word, it requires motivational fuel, the second element of the talent code.