Carol S. Dweck Quotes & Sayings

True self-confidence is the courage to be open - to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. — Carol S. Dweck

With the right mindset and the right teaching, people are capable of a lot more than we think. — Carol S. Dweck

The best thing parents can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. — Carol S. Dweck

We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don't like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. — Carol S. Dweck

I derive just as much happiness from the process as from the results. — Carol S. Dweck

Effort is one of those things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. — Carol S. Dweck

What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait? — Carol S. Dweck

Why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? — Carol S. Dweck

Create an organization that prizes the development of ability - and watch the leaders emerge. — Carol S. Dweck

Exceptional people convert life's setbacks into future successes, — Carol S. Dweck

Chose executives on the basis of "runway," their capacity for growth. — Carol S. Dweck

Skills and achievement come through commitment and effort. — Carol S. Dweck

For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. — Carol S. Dweck

They know how to take tests and get A's but they don't know how to do this - yet. They forget the yet. — Carol S. Dweck

Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker writer, has suggested that as a society we value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort. We endow our heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. — Carol S. Dweck

Like my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, these teachers preached and practiced the fixed mindset. In their classrooms, the students who started the year in the high-ability group ended the year there, and those who started the year in the low-ability group ended the year there. But some teachers preached and practiced a growth mindset. They focused on the idea that all children could develop their skills, and in their classrooms a weird thing happened. It didn't matter whether students started the year in the high- or the low-ability group. Both groups ended the year way up high. It's a powerful experience to see these findings. — Carol S. Dweck

What eventually set him apart was his mindset and drive. He never stopped being the curious, tinkering boy looking for new challenges. — Carol S. Dweck

Success is about being your best self, not about being better than others; failure is an opportunity, not a condemnation; effort is the key to success. — Carol S. Dweck

person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training. Did — Carol S. Dweck

I start sentences with ands and buts. I end sentences with prepositions. — Carol S. Dweck

Research shows that normal young children misbehave every three minutes. — Carol S. Dweck

Another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses. — Carol S. Dweck

A fixed ability that needs to be proven, and a changeable ability that can be developed through learning. — Carol S. Dweck

Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going. — Carol S. Dweck

And this is part of the fixed mindset. Effort is for those who don't have the ability. — Carol S. Dweck

Yes, he was depressed, but he was coping the way people in the growth mindset tend to cope - with determination. — Carol S. Dweck

If you're somebody when you're successful, what are you when you're unsuccessful? — Carol S. Dweck

The fixed-mindset premise that great geniuses do not need great teams. They just need little helpers to carry out their brilliant ideas. — Carol S. Dweck

We also know that there is a mindset that helps people cope well with setbacks, points them to good strategies, and leads them to act in their best interest. — Carol S. Dweck

Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be. — Carol S. Dweck

I expected differences among children in how they coped with the difficulty, but I saw something I never expected.
Confronted with the hard puzzles, one then-year-old boy pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, :I love a challenge!".
I never though anyone loved failure.
Not only weren't they discouraged by failure, they didn't even think they were failing. They though they were learning. — Carol S. Dweck

Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don't tell you where a student could end up. — Carol S. Dweck

Some of the world's best athletes didn't start out being that hot. If you have a passion for a sport, put in the effort and see. — Carol S. Dweck

... see failure not as a sign of stupidity but as a lack of experience and skill.
(Seth Abrams) — Carol S. Dweck

When people are in a growth mindset, the stereotype doesn't disrupt their performance. The growth mindset takes the teeth out of the stereotype and makes people better able to fight back. They don't believe in permanent inferiority. And if they are behind - well, then they'll work harder and try to catch up. — Carol S. Dweck

Is there something in your past that you think measured you? A — Carol S. Dweck

What did you learn today? What mistake did you make that taught you something? What did you try hard at today? — Carol S. Dweck

As children, we were given a choice between the talented but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare. We wanted to be swift as the wind and a bit more strategic - say, not taking quite so many snoozes before the finish line. After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win. The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through. — Carol S. Dweck

You have to work hardest for the things you love most. — Carol S. Dweck

The growth mindset also doesn't mean everything that CAN be changed SHOULD be changed. We all need to accept some of our imperfections, especially the ones that don't really harm our lives or the lives of others. — Carol S. Dweck

Or: "The ideal student values knowledge for its own sake, as well as for its instrumental uses. He or she hopes to make a contribution to society at large. — Carol S. Dweck

A few modern philosophers ... assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism. ... With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before. — Carol S. Dweck

Picture your ideal love relationship. Does it involve perfect compatibility - no disagreements, no compromises, no hard work? Please think again. In every relationship, issues arise. Try to see them from a growth mindset: Problems can be a vehicle for developing greater understanding and intimacy. Allow your partner to air his or her differences, listen carefully, and discuss them in a patient and caring manner. You may be surprised — Carol S. Dweck

John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren't a failure until you start to blame. — Carol S. Dweck

In fact, studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities. — Carol S. Dweck

I don't mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I've done as well as I possibly could. — Carol S. Dweck

Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Lucille Ball, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields. — Carol S. Dweck

CEOs face this choice all the time. Should they confront their shortcomings or should they create a world where they have none? Lee Iacocca chose the latter. He surrounded himself with worshipers, exiled the critics - and quickly lost touch with where his field was going. Lee Iacocca had become a nonlearner. — Carol S. Dweck

If you make a mistake, you got to make it right. I realized I had a choice. I could sit in my misery or I could do something about it." Pulling — Carol S. Dweck

One day, young "Dr." Welch, decked out in his fancy suit, got into his new convertible. He proceeded to put the top down and was promptly squirted with dark, grungy oil that ruined both his suit and the paint job on his beloved car. "There I was, thinking I was larger than life, and smack came the reminder that brought me back to reality. It was a great lesson. — Carol S. Dweck

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone - the fixed mindset - creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. — Carol S. Dweck

Math and science need to be made more hospitable places for women. And women need all the growth mindset they can get to take their rightful places in these fields. — Carol S. Dweck

Finding #2: Those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating. They're informative. They're a wake-up call. — Carol S. Dweck

As a New York Times article points out, failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?" If so, he says, "You may be outscored but you will never lose. — Carol S. Dweck

In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail - or if you're not the best - it's all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless of the outcome. They're tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven't found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful. — Carol S. Dweck

scientists are learning that people have more capacity for lifelong learning and brain development than they ever thought. — Carol S. Dweck

A genius who constantly wants to upgrade his genius. — Carol S. Dweck

No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment. — Carol S. Dweck

Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn't define you. It's a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from. — Carol S. Dweck

Mia, what is the most important thing for a soccer player to have?" With no hesitation, she answered, "Mental toughness. — Carol S. Dweck

To be successful in sports, you need to learn techniques and skills and practice them regularly. — Carol S. Dweck

This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. — Carol S. Dweck

With the threat of failure looming, students with the growth mindset set instead mobilized their resources for learning. They told us that they, too, sometimes felt overwhelmed, but their response was to dig in and do what it takes. They were like George Danzig. Who? George Danzig was a graduate student in math at Berkeley. One day, as usual, he rushed in late to his math class and quickly copied the two homework problems from the blackboard. When he later went to do them, he found them very difficult, and it took him several days of hard work to crack them open and solve them. They turned out not to be homework problems at all. They were two famous math problems that had never been solved. — Carol S. Dweck

Becoming is better than being — Carol S. Dweck

Hierarchy means very little to me. Let's put together in meetings the people who can help solve a problem, regardless of position. — Carol S. Dweck

Your horse is only as fast as your brain. Every time you learn something, your horse will move ahead. — Carol S. Dweck

Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance. — Carol S. Dweck

Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world
the world of fixed traits
success is about proving you're smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other
the world of changing qualities
it's about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself. — Carol S. Dweck

But does a growth mindset make people good just at getting their own way? Often negotiations require people to understand and try to serve the other person's interests as well. Ideally, at the end of a negotiation, both parties feel their needs have been met. In a study with a more challenging negotiation task, those with a growth mindset were able to get beyond initial failures by constructing a deal that addressed both parties' underlying interests. So, not only do those with a growth mindset gain more lucrative outcomes for themselves, but, more important, they also come up with more creative solutions that confer benefits all around. — Carol S. Dweck

People may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but it is clear that experience, training, and personal effort take them the rest of the way. — Carol S. Dweck

When Do You Feel Smart: When You're Flawless or When You're Learning? — Carol S. Dweck

you aren't a failure until you start to blame. What — Carol S. Dweck

Many growth-minded people didn't even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It's ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. — Carol S. Dweck

they would get praise for taking initiative, for seeing a difficult task through, for struggling and learning something new, for being undaunted by a setback, or for being open to and acting on criticism. — Carol S. Dweck

This is hard. This is fun. — Carol S. Dweck

Don't judge. Teach. It's a learning process. — Carol S. Dweck

When people with the fixed mindset opt for success over growth, what are they really trying to prove? That they're special. Even superior. — Carol S. Dweck

They were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the most brutal answers - that is, to look failures in the face, even their own, while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the end. — Carol S. Dweck

Fixed ability that needs to be proven, and a changeable ability that can be developed through learning. That — Carol S. Dweck

Instead, they are constantly trying to improve. They surround themselves with the most able people they can find, they look squarely at their own mistakes and deficiencies, and they ask frankly what skills they and the company will need in the future. — Carol S. Dweck

A company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive. — Carol S. Dweck

If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don't have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence. — Carol S. Dweck

Fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you'll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving. — Carol S. Dweck

Actually, people with the fixed mindset expect ability to show up on its own, before any learning takes place. — Carol S. Dweck

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training. — Carol S. Dweck

Not only weren't they discouraged by failure, they didn't even think they were failing. They thought they were learning. — Carol S. Dweck

What's more, it's not as though the fixed mindset wants to leave gracefully. If the fixed mindset has been controlling your internal monologue, it can say some pretty strong thing to you ... The fixed mindset once offered you a refuge from that very feeling, and it offers it to you again.
Don't take it. — Carol S. Dweck

Failure is information-we label it failure, but it's more like, 'This didn't work, I'm a problem solver, and I'll try something else.' — Carol S. Dweck

All of these people had character. None of them thought they were special people, born with the right to win. They were people who worked hard, who learned how to keep their focus under pressure, and who stretched beyond their ordinary abilities when they had to. — Carol S. Dweck

It is not always people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest. — Carol S. Dweck

The more depressed people with the growth mindset felt, the more they took action to confront their problems, the more they made sure to keep up with their schoolwork, and the more they kept up with their lives. The worse they felt, the more determined they became! — Carol S. Dweck

the major factor in whether people achieve expertise "is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement. — Carol S. Dweck

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them. — Carol S. Dweck

to see failure not as a sign of stupidity but as lack of experience and skill. Your — Carol S. Dweck

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? — Carol S. Dweck

I looked for themes and underlying principles across lectures," and "I went over mistakes until I was certain I understood them." They were studying to learn, not just to ace the test. And, actually, this was why they got higher grades - not because they were smarter or had a better background in science. — Carol S. Dweck

When you're lying on your deathbed, one of the cool things to say is, 'I really explored myself.' This sense of urgency was instilled when my mom died. If you only go through life doing stuff that's easy, shame on you. — Carol S. Dweck