Quotes About Progress

Progress along the way should count for something, but we discard it because goals are pass-fail, all-or-nothing, yes-or-no. There's no partial credit given.

Even when you make a good decision, that doesn't mean that it was the best decision. In fact, it rarely is. Striving to improve means being willing to fight the complacency that can come from a good decision leading to a good result.

As these things change, if we were to rerun the cost-benefit analysis, the output would surely be different. But we don't rerun it.

We can't just "absorb" experiences and expect to learn. As novelist and philosopher Aldous Huxley recognized, "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." There is a big difference between getting experience and becoming an expert. That difference lies in the ability to identify when the outcomes of our decisions have something to teach us and what that lesson might be.

It's not just that we need to set more flexible goals. We ourselves also need to be more flexible in the way we evaluate success and failure.

thinking in bets is not a miracle cure. Thinking in bets won't make self-serving bias disappear or motivated reasoning vanish into thin air. But it will make those things better. And a little bit better is all we need to transform our lives.

Astro Teller also understands a subtler but no less important point, that we have a tendency, when we butt up against a monkey that is proving difficult to solve, to turn our attention to building pedestals rather than giving up. We prefer that illusion of progress to having to quit and admit defeat.

If our goal is to lose twenty pounds in six months, we can plan how to achieve that by imagining it's six months from now and we've lost the weight. What are the things we did to lose the weight? How did we avoid junk food? How did we increase the amount of exercise we were doing? How did we stick to the regimen?

One cannot see the future of something learned.

Aqueles que admiravam as nossas coisas velhas, a bomba d'água no pátio, as casas normandas com viga de madeira aparente, certamente queriam nos impedir de ter o que eles já tinham, eles que eram tão modernos, com água na torneira e uma casa branca.

My whole story as a woman: going down a flight of stairs, and hanging back at each step.

L'interminable lenteur d'un temps qui s'épaississait sans avancer, comme celui des rêves.

Je dis souvent « nous » maintenant, parce que j'ai longtemps pensé de cette façon et je ne sais pas quand j'ai cessé de le faire.

Feminism is a word that I identify with. The term has become synonymous with vitriolic man-hating but it needs to come back to a place where both men and women can embrace it. It is particularly important for women in developing countries.

I'm appalled the word feminism has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture.

It's hard to tell how far women's individuality has come in the past twenty years.

significant professional growth without personal transformation is impossible.

We often respond to today's world with yesterday's adaptations. (quoting Dan Fesster)

I've always tried to do my very best, and I want to be the very best age, whatever age I am.

Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.

Obstacles do not appear in your way in order to stop you. Rather, they appear in order to strengthen and hone you and your plans. They are not your enemy. They are your secret ally, but only if you treat them as friendly forces of nature.

As we become spiritually enlightened and technologically advanced, the role of sex and gender can only diminish. Sex will be a thing of dark ages

An optimist is a person who takes action, who moves out ahead of the crowd.

Knowing your destination is half the journey.