Quotes from Angela Duckworth

Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.

I do think that whatever ambition I may have had natively was amplified by my father's clear valuing of it. I knew that was what my dad really cared about.

The parenting style that is good for grit is also the parenting style good for most other things: Be really, really demanding, and be very, very supportive.

Boredom is a very self-conscious emotion by definition. Interest is not. So you can actually be completely absorbed in something and, at certain points in your development, not even realize that you're into 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.

If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older - even if we can't pull all-nighters like we used to.

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

Striving is exhausting. Sometimes I do say things like, 'I wish I were not quite this driven to be excellent.' It's not a comfortable life. It's not relaxed. I'm not relaxed as a person. I mean, I'm not unhappy. But... it's the opposite of being comfortable.

To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, 'How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?' The honest answer is, I don't know.

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.

I know a lot of CEOs who are looking for three- to four-year varsity athletes - not necessarily because these people are going to be doing pushups or spiking volleyballs in the workplace, but because they're looking for that continuity, that person who was gritty about something.

It's a very good thing to teach kids to finish what they started in the sense of fulfilling their commitments. 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.