Top 160 Adam M. Grant Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “As Jack Handey advised in one of his “Deep Thoughts” on Saturday Night Live, before you criticize people, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.”

— Adam M. Grant

2. “If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.”

— Adam M. Grant

3. “Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance.”

— Adam M. Grant

4. “What works is not perspective-taking but perspective-seeking: actually talking to people to gain insight into the nuances of their views. That’s what good scientists do: instead of drawing conclusions about people based on minimal clues, they test their hypotheses by striking up conversations.”

— Adam M. Grant

5. “The more you value achievement, the more you come to dread failure.”

— Adam M. Grant

6. “In ancient Greece, Plutarch wrote of a wooden ship that Theseus sailed from Crete to Athens. To preserve the ship, as its old planks decayed, Athenians would replace them with new wood. Eventually all the planks had been replaced. It looked like the same ship, but none of its parts was the same. Was it still the same ship? Later, philosophers added a wrinkle: if you collected all the original planks and fashioned them into a ship, would that be the same ship?”

— Adam M. Grant

7. “A third potential factor is that when we hunt for happiness, we overemphasize pleasure at the expense of purpose. This theory is consistent with data suggesting that meaning is healthier than happiness, and that people who look for purpose in their work are more successful in pursuing their passions – and less likely to quit their jobs – than those who look for joy. While enjoyment waxes and wanes, meaning tends to last.”

— Adam M. Grant

8. “Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction,” blogger Tim Urban explains. “While humility is a permeable filter that absorbs life experience and converts it into knowledge and wisdom, arrogance is a rubber shield that life experience simply bounces off of.”

— Adam M. Grant

9. “Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo. Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better.”

— Adam M. Grant

10. “Listening is a way of offering others our scarcest, most precious gift: our attention. Once we’ve demonstrated that we care about them and their goals, they’re more willing to listen to us.”

— Adam M. Grant

11. “Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.”

— Adam M. Grant

12. “In a recent study comparing every Nobel Prize–winning scientist from 1901 to 2005 with typical scientists of the same era, both groups attained deep expertise in their respective fields of study. But the Nobel Prize winners were dramatically more likely to be involved in the arts than less accomplished scientists. Here’s.”

— Adam M. Grant

13. “Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches Had bellies with stars.1 The Plain-Belly Sneetches Had none upon thars. Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all. But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches Would brag, ‘We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.’ With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort ‘We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!’” Dr. Seuss.”

— Adam M. Grant

15. “The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.” – Quoting Derek Sivers.”

— Adam M. Grant

16. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” philosopher George Santayana.”

— Adam M. Grant

17. “Arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. Humility is a reflective lens: it helps us see them clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses.”

— Adam M. Grant

18. “The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we don’t know. Good judgment depends on having the skill – and the will – to open our minds.”

— Adam M. Grant

19. “Don’t confuse confidence with competence.”

— Adam M. Grant

20. “We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt, and we let our beliefs get brittle long before our bones.”

— Adam M. Grant

21. “When students confront complex problems, they often feel confused. A teacher’s natural impulse is to rescue them as quickly as possible so they don’t feel lost or incompetent. Yet psychologists find that one of the hallmarks of an open mind is responding to confusion with curiosity and interest. One student put it eloquently: “I need time for my confusion.” Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved.”

— Adam M. Grant

22. “By asking questions rather than thinking for the audience, we invite them to join us as a partner and think for themselves. If we approach an argument as a war, there will be winners and losers. If we see it more as a dance, we can begin to choreograph a way forward. By considering the strongest version of an opponent’s perspective and limiting our responses to our few best steps, we have a better chance of finding a rhythm.”

— Adam M. Grant

23. “A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.”

— Adam M. Grant

24. “We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn’t limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.”

— Adam M. Grant

25. “Humility is often misunderstood. It’s not a matter of having low self-confidence. One of the Latin roots of humility means “from the earth.” It’s about being grounded – recognizing that we’re flawed and fallible.”

— Adam M. Grant

26. “As stereotypes stick and prejudice deepens, we don’t just identify with our own group; we disidentify with our adversaries, coming to define who we are by what we’re not. We don’t just preach the virtues of our side; we find self-worth in prosecuting the vices of our rivals.”

— Adam M. Grant

27. “In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time.”

— Adam M. Grant

28. “The better you are at crunching numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analyzing patterns that contradict your views.”

— Adam M. Grant

29. “Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for stereotypes, because you’re faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.”

— Adam M. Grant

30. “Psychologists have long found that the person most likely to persuade you to change your mind is you. You get to pick the reasons you find most compelling, and you come away with a real sense of ownership over them.”

— Adam M. Grant

31. “To counter apathy, most change agents focus on presenting an inspiring vision of the future. This is an important message to convey, but it’s not the type of communication that should come first. If you want people to take risks, you need first to show what’s wrong with the present. To drive people out of their comfort zones, you have to cultivate dissatisfaction, frustration, or anger at the current state of affairs, making it a guaranteed loss.”

— Adam M. Grant

32. “Teachers’ beliefs created self-fulfilling prophecies. When teachers believed their students were bloomers, they set high expectations for their success. As a result, the teachers engaged in more supportive behaviors that boosted the students’ confidence and enhanced their learning and development.”

— Adam M. Grant

33. “The art of advocacy is to lead you to my conclusion on your terms.”

— Adam M. Grant

34. “You don’t have to be first to be an original, and the most successful originals don’t always arrive on schedule. They are fashionably late to the party. The.”

— Adam M. Grant

35. “Jeff Bezos says. “If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot.”

— Adam M. Grant

36. “You gotta kiss a lot of frogs,” he often told his team, “before you find a prince.” In fact, frog kissing was one of his mantras: he encouraged his engineers to try out many variations to increase their chances of stumbling on the right one. But.”

— Adam M. Grant

37. “It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.”

— Adam M. Grant

38. “Discovering I was wrong felt joyful because it meant I’d learned something. As Danny told me, “Being wrong is the only way I feel sure I’ve learned anything.”

— Adam M. Grant

39. “When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks. The.”

— Adam M. Grant

40. “Let’s agree to disagree” shouldn’t end a discussion. It should start a new conversation, with a focus on understanding and learning rather than arguing and persuading. That’s what we’d do in scientist mode: take the long view and ask how we could have handled the debate more effectively.”

— Adam M. Grant

41. “In 1927, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik demonstrated that people have a better memory for incomplete than complete tasks. Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it. But when it is interrupted and left undone, it stays active in our minds. As.”

— Adam M. Grant

42. “Inverse charisma. What a wonderful turn of phrase to capture the magnetic quality of a great listener. Think about how rare that kind of listening is.”

— Adam M. Grant

43. “In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

— Adam M. Grant

44. “A few years ago, I argued in my book Originals that if we want to fight groupthink, it helps to have “strong opinions, weakly held.” Since then I’ve changed my mind – I now believe that’s a mistake. If we hold an opinion weakly, expressing it strongly can backfire. Communicating it with some uncertainty signals confident humility, invites curiosity, and leads to a more nuanced discussion.”

— Adam M. Grant

45. “Disagreeable people tend to be more critical, skeptical, and challenging – and they’re more likely than their peers to become engineers and lawyers. They’re not just comfortable with conflict; it energizes them. If you’re highly disagreeable, you might be happier in an argument than in a friendly conversation.”

— Adam M. Grant

46. “In a popular TED talk and book, Simon Sinek argues that if we want to inspire people, we should start with why. If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us. This is excellent advice – and when you’re doing something original that challenges the status quo, you have to be careful about how you communicate your why.”

— Adam M. Grant

47. “Agreeable people make for a great support network: they’re excited to encourage us and cheerlead for us. Rethinking depends on a different kind of network: a challenge network, a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses. Their role is to activate rethinking cycles by pushing us to be humble about our expertise, doubt our knowledge, and be curious about new perspectives.”

— Adam M. Grant

48. “What evidence would change your mind?” If the answer is “nothing,” then there’s no point in continuing the debate. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.”

— Adam M. Grant

49. “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world,” E. B. White once wrote. “This makes it difficult to plan the day.”

— Adam M. Grant

50. “Success doesn’t measure a human being, effort does.”

— Adam M. Grant