153 Quotes by Amy Chua

Liberals have cried wolf too many times. If everything is racist and sexist, nothing is. When Trump, the real wolf, came along, no one listened.

The truth is I’m not good at enjoying life.

Kids raised to be pampered and spoiled don’t really end up being good leaders. Leaders need to be independent minded and confident.

That’s why I liked the Suzuki method of teaching piano. There are seven books, and everybody has to start with Book One. Each book includes ten to fifteen songs, and you have to go in order. Kids who practice hard get assigned new songs each week, whereas kids who don’t practice get stuck on the same song for weeks, even months, and sometimes just quit because they’re bored out of their minds.

The Chinese mom is not the helicopter mom. I would never do their homework for them. It’s all about: Take responsibility, don’t blame others. Be self-reliant. Never blame the teacher.

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, “Hey fatty-lose some weight.” By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of “health” and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self image.

America’s elites today, especially progressive ones, often don’t realize how judgmental they are. They disdain tacky things, and, not coincidentally, those tacky things – fake tans, big hair, pro wrestling, chrome bull testicles hanging from the back of a big truck – are usually associated with lower-income Americans.

You can’t invent Google, Facebook or the iPod unless you’ve mastered the basics, are willing to put in long hours and can pick yourself up from the floor when life knocks you down the first 10 times.

Group identification can powerfully reinforce these conformity effects. In experiments similar to Asch’s landmark study, subjects have been found to conform much more when presented with judgments said to come from members of an in-group, and much less when judgments are said to come from out-group members. And it’s not just that people tend to think what their fellow tribe members think. They will do what their fellow tribe members do – even to the point of savagery.