Quotes by 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.

I will say that if my wildest dreams come true, I will, like, wake up one day, and I will be Carol Dweck, right? Because she is like everything I want to be.

I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience. I worked hard as a teacher. But those are completely different career paths. And the lack of direction is why I didn't get far enough in any of those things.

I'm so much more gratified by my life now that I have an expertise. I wake up every day thinking about a fairly small set of scientific questions all related to the psychology of achievement, and I'll never get bored of those questions. That's something I couldn't say to you when I was 22 or 25 or probably even 31.

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

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.

I'm not a policy oriented person. I'm constrained to what I study. But educational policy has not yet taken adequate note of the whole child. Kids are not just their IQ or standardized test scores. It matters whether or not they show up, how hard they work.

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.

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.

During all my undergrad years and in high school, I was involved in tutoring and public service. At Harvard, I spent over 35 hours a week doing service. I was a Big Sister, I worked for the homeless, the elderly; it was the epicenter of my focus.