Duckworth Quotes & Sayings

In sum, what have we learned? First: grit, talent, and all other psychological traits relevant to success in life are influenced by genes and also by experience. Second: there's no single gene for grit, or indeed any other psychological trait. — Angela Duckworth

My therapist would be so happy to know I'm doing all this walking. They've done a great job of putting me back together, haven't they? — Tammy Duckworth

In other words, we want to believe that Mark Spitz was born to swim in a way that none of us were and that none of us could. We don't want to sit on the pool deck and watch him progress from amateur to expert. We prefer our excellence fully formed. We prefer mystery to mundanity. — Angela Duckworth

To reboot your association for success, you must shift your beliefs to realize how vitally important key investments in technology can be as an ongoing and personalized communication tool with your members. — Holly Duckworth

whatever your occupation, you can maneuver within your job description - adding, delegating, and customizing what you do to match your interests and values. — Angela Duckworth

Being a "promising beginner" is fun, but being an actual expert is infinitely more gratifying. — Angela Duckworth

Follow your passion was not the message I heard growing up. Instead, I was told that the practical realities of surviving "in the real world" were far more important than any person living a "sheltered life" such as my own could imagine. I was warned that overly idealistic dreams of "finding something I loved" could in fact be a breadcrumb trail into poverty and disappointment. — Angela Duckworth

Which is more important to success - talent or effort? Americans — Angela Duckworth

Now it's when you build your association with the members, they are already there. — Holly Duckworth

When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can't be found, you guarantee they won — Angela Duckworth

Write bylaws in a simple language - no one needs an advanced degree to understand them. — Holly Duckworth

But if, instead, you define genius as working toward excellence, ceaselessly, with every element of your being - then, in fact, my dad is a genius, and so am I, and so is Coates, and, if you're willing, so are you. — Angela Duckworth

Real learning, attentive, real learning, deep learning, is playful and frustrating and joyful and discouraging and exciting and sociable and private all the time, which is what makes it great. — Eleanor Duckworth

...grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity. The maturation story is that we develop the capacity for long-term passion and perseverance as we get older. — Angela Duckworth

Thing Rule: You can quit. But you can't quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other "natural" stopping point has arrived. You must, at least for the interval to which you've committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. In — Angela Duckworth

My arm bones looked like chicken bones. — Tammy Duckworth

Collaboratition: the art of working with our competitors. — Holly Duckworth

as much as talent counts, effort counts twice. — Angela Duckworth

An association that chooses to emerge healthier it needs to be willing to shift the energy of the board and volunteers to be positive and fun, shift down to a more manageable and nimble-size board, and via the law of attraction know the right board members will lead the association forward. — Holly Duckworth

Of all the virtues related to intellectual functioning, the most passive is the virtue of knowing the right answer. Knowing the right answer requires no decisions, carries no risks, and makes no demands. It is automatic. It is thoughtless — Eleanor Duckworth

The highly accomplished were paragons of perseverance. — Angela Duckworth

A calling is not some fully formed thing that you find," she tells advice seekers. "It's much more dynamic. Whatever you do - whether you're a janitor or the CEO - you can continually look at what you do and ask how it connects to other people, how it connects to the bigger picture, how it can be an expression of your deepest values. — Angela Duckworth

Ctrl+Alt+Believe: Reboot System is for associations that are courageous and want to emerge from unconscious thoughts and become conscious about choice - associations that have a deep conviction to meet the visions and mission of their members in spite of changes in the business climate, globalism, technology, generational changes, and all that is yet to come. — Holly Duckworth

As soon as possible, experts hungrily seek feedback on how they did. Necessarily, much of that feedback is negative. This means that experts are more interested in what they did wrong - so they can fix it - than what they did right. The active processing of this feedback is as essential as its immediacy. — Angela Duckworth

figure out when and where you're most comfortable doing deliberate practice. Once you've made your selection, do deliberate practice then and there every day. Why? Because routines are a godsend when it comes to doing something hard. A — Angela Duckworth

Well okay, that didn't go so well, but I guess I will just carry on.' — Angela Duckworth

There is a splendid story that, during the long sea voyage, Cowdrey was observed by Frank Tyson being addressed with some passion by a well-dressed man whom Tyson didn't recognize: 'When you reach Australia, just remember one thing,' exclaimed the older gentleman, 'Hate the bastards!' Tyson enquired of scorer and baggage man George Duckworth as to the man's identity: 'That," confided the 'bodyline' veteran, 'was Douglas Jardine. — Dave Wilson

I won't just have a job; I'll have a calling. I'll challenge myself every day. When I get knocked down, I'll get back up. I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I'll strive to be the grittiest. — Angela Duckworth

Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right. — Angela Duckworth

Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare. — Angela Duckworth

Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn't. With — Angela Duckworth

most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary. — Angela Duckworth

In any racing engine, the nearer you are to it disintegrating, the better it's performance will be — Keith Duckworth

Failure is not a permanent condition. — Angela Duckworth

At its core, the idea of purpose is the idea that what we do matters to people other than ourselves. — Angela Duckworth

I learned a lesson I'd never forget. The lesson was that, when you have setbacks and failures, you can't overreact to them. — Angela Duckworth

Associations are communities that are built on the hearts and minds of people who come together to do good in the world — Holly Duckworth

It soon became clear that doing one thing better and better might be more satisfying than staying an amateur at many different things: — Angela Duckworth

Do not talk different; act on it. — Holly Duckworth

Intelligence tests require that certain things be figured out, but the figuring out doesn't count. If the figuring out leads to the right answer, then of course the right answer counts. But no tester will ever know and no score will ever reveal whether the right answer was a triumph of imagination and intellectual daring, or whether the child knew the right answer all along. In addition, the more time the child spends on figuring things out on the test, the less time there is for filling in the right answers; that is, the more you actually think to get the right answers on an intelligence test, the less intelligent the score will look. — Eleanor Duckworth

The 'DuckTales' ensemble is clearly critical. There's the core set of characters - Scrooge, Webby, Launchpad, Huey, Dewey and Louie ... Plus there's Gyro and Duckworth and Mrs. Beakley and so on. The cast is huge. — Warren Spector

Woolf drew on her memories of her holidays in Cornwall for To the Lighthouse, which was conceived in part as an elegy on her parents. Her father was a vigorous walker and an Alpinist of some renown, a member of the Alpine Club and editor of the Alpine Journal from 1868 to 1872; he was the first person to climb the Schreckhorn in the Alps and he wrote on Alpine pleasures in The Playground of Europe (1871). By the time he married Julia Duckworth in 1878, however, a more sedentary Leslie Stephen was the established editor of the Cornhill Magazine, from which he later resigned to take up the editorship of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1882, the year of Woolf 's birth. Stephen laboured on this monumental Victorian enterprise until 1990, editing single-handed the first twenty-six volumes and writing well over 300 biographical entries. He also published numerous volumes of criticism, the most important of which were on eighteenth-century thought and literature. — Jane Goldman

It is better to be un-informed than ill-informed. — Keith Duckworth

My experience in Iraq made me realize, and during the recovery, that I could have died. And I just had to do more with my life. — Tammy Duckworth

A girl who is told repeatedly that she's no genius ends up winning an award for being one. The — Angela Duckworth

Teachers are often, and understandably, impatient for their students to develop clear and adequate ideas. But putting ideas in relation to each other isn't a simple job. It's confusing and this confusion does take time. All of us need time for our confusion if we are to build the breadth and depth that give significance to our knowledge. — Eleanor Duckworth

Nobody wants to show you the hours and hours of becoming. They'd rather show the highlight of what they've become. — Angela Duckworth

Turbos are people who can't build engines. — Keith Duckworth

What I have learned from the teachers with whom I have worked is that, just as there is no simple solution to the arms race, there is no simple answer to how to work with children in the classroom. It is a matter of being present as a whole person, with your own thoughts and feelings, and of accepting children as whole people, with their own thoughts and feelings. It's a matter of working very hard to find out what those thoughts and feelings are, as a starting point for developing a view of a world in which people are as much concerned about other people security as they are about their own — Eleanor Duckworth

Flow with change or be dragged. — Holly Duckworth

Reboot your beliefs, create new thoughts, and choose powerful action. — Holly Duckworth

Staying on the treadmill is one thing, and I do think it's related to staying true to our commitments even when we're not comfortable. But getting back on the treadmill the next day, eager to try again, is in my view even more reflective of grit. Because when you don't come back the next day - when you permanently turn your back on a commitment - your effort plummets to zero. As a consequence, your skills stop improving, and at the same time, you stop producing anything with whatever skills you have. — Angela Duckworth

You can't simply will yourself to like things, either. As Jeff Bezos has observed, 'One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. — Angela Duckworth

Getting people to think about what they think, and asking them questions about it, is the best way I know how to teach, — Eleanor Duckworth

Control in business is the combination of written and unwritten rules that create an organizational decision framework and staff hierarchy. — Holly Duckworth

But it's not the pressure of data that gives rise to the understanding. It's, on the contrary, the child's own struggle to make sense of the data — Eleanor Duckworth

You don't want to cover a subject; you want to uncover it. — Eleanor Duckworth

President Obama pushed for fairness in the military, listening to commanders as we ended Don't Ask Don't Tell, and on how to allow women to officially serve in more combat jobs. Because America's daughters are just as capable of defending liberty as her sons! — Tammy Duckworth

...interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can't really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won't...Without experimenting, you can't figure out which interests will stick, and which won't. — Angela Duckworth

I spent a lot of time between bars like this. — Tammy Duckworth

For associations to emerge healthy and strong, they must re-engage with their members around the heart-centered why of why they exist, leverage current leadership, and build future leadership while they integrate the balance of technology and face-to-face experiences. — Holly Duckworth

We are all dishonored when a veteran sleeps on the same streets that he or she has defended. We are all dishonored when a veteran's family has to live in a shelter while he or she is out fighting for us. WE NEED TO FIX THAT! — Tammy Duckworth

Development is only necessary to rectify the ignorance of designers — Keith Duckworth

It had been an evening in the empty dance hall when not even that depth of stone and the constant stirring of the ceiling fans could cool the stifling and humid night air, which had entered the Duckworth Club as heavily as a fog from the Arabian Sea. Even atheists, like Lowji, were praying for the monsoon rains. After — John Irving

callings have little to do with formal job descriptions. In fact, she believes that just — Angela Duckworth

Yes, but the main thing is that greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable. — Angela Duckworth

A business reboot is an evolutionary process. — Holly Duckworth

To know enough about things is one prerequisite for (having) wonderful ideas. — Eleanor Duckworth

No whining. No complaining. No excuses. — Angela Duckworth

To be effective as future organizations, we must know our fellow leaders better, deeper. — Holly Duckworth

When "We've always done it that way" is replaced with "Let's try something new," associations will leap to greatness. — Holly Duckworth

Non-profit does not mean not for revenue. — Holly Duckworth

Learning is Messy. — Eleanor Duckworth

Fear, doubt, and lack are things we must talk about to emerge as associations that thrive for years to come. — Holly Duckworth

Angela Duckworth has shown how important grit and perseverance are to lifetime outcomes. College students who report that they finish whatever they begin have higher grades than their peers, even ones with higher SATs. — David Brooks

In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction. — Angela Duckworth

Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another. — Angela Duckworth

I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. — Angela Duckworth

Board and Staff relationships are critical in any business reboot - don't overlook or undervalue them! — Holly Duckworth

For Tammy Duckworth to blame the junior senator from Illinois for Islamic terror shows that she is a naive fool not fit for office in the Senate. — Mark Kirk

Stop reading so much and go think. — Angela Duckworth