Top 160 Adam M. Grant Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

52. “If you want people to modify their behavior, is it better to highlight the benefits of changing or the costs of not changing?”

— Adam M. Grant

53. “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

54. “Research suggests that there are two fundamental paths to influence: dominance and prestige. When we establish dominance, we gain influence because others see us as strong, powerful, and authoritative. When we earn prestige, we become influential because others respect and admire us.”

— Adam M. Grant

55. “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

56. “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

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

— Adam M. Grant

58. “You gain believability by other believable people saying you’re believable.”

— Adam M. Grant

59. “No person could possibly be original in one area unless he were possessed of the emotional and social stability that comes from fixed attitudes in all areas other than the one in which he is being original.”

— Adam M. Grant

60. “Talented people are attracted to those who care about them.”

— Adam M. Grant

61. “Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong.”

— Adam M. Grant

62. “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

63. “Negative relationships are unpleasant, but they’re predictable: if a colleague consistently undermines you, you can keep your distance and expect the worst. But when you’re dealing with an ambivalent relationship, you’re constantly on guard, grappling with questions about when that person can actually be trusted. As Duffy’s team explains, “It takes more emotional energy and coping resources to deal with individuals who are inconsistent.”

— Adam M. Grant

64. “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

65. “Taking is using other people solely for one’s own gain. Receiving is accepting help from others while maintaining a willingness to pay it back and forward.”

— Adam M. Grant

66. “When you find out you’ve made a mistake, take it as a sign that you’ve just discovered something new. Don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself. It helps you focus less on proving yourself – and more on improving yourself.”

— Adam M. Grant

67. “Without a sense of urgency, people... won’t make needed sacrafices. Instead they cling to the status quo and resist.′ – Quoting John Kotter.”

— Adam M. Grant

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

— Adam M. Grant

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

— Adam M. Grant

70. “But there’s a twist: expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker’s competence.”

— Adam M. Grant

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

— Adam M. Grant

72. “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

73. “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

74. “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

75. “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

76. “Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity. Long before the modern obsession with efficiency precipitated by the Industrial Revolution and the Protestant work ethic, civilizations recognized the benefits of procrastination. In ancient Egypt, there were two different verbs for procrastination: one denoted laziness; the other meant waiting for the right time.”

— Adam M. Grant

77. “This is called the Sarick Effect, named after the social scientist Leslie Sarick. In both situations, Griscom was presenting ideas to people who had more power than he had, and trying to convince them to commit their resources. Most of us assume that to be persuasive, we ought to emphasize our strengths and minimize our weaknesses. That kind of powerful communication makes sense if the audience is supportive.”

— Adam M. Grant

78. “When takers win, there’s usually someone else who loses. Research shows that people tend to envy successful takers and look for ways to knock them down a notch. In contrast, when givers like David Hornik win, people are rooting for them and supporting them, rather than gunning for them. Givers succeed in a way that creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them.”

— Adam M. Grant

79. “That’s where the best forecasters excelled: they were eager to think again. They saw their opinions more as hunches than as truths – as possibilities to entertain rather than facts to embrace. They questioned ideas before accepting them, and they were willing to keep questioning them even after accepting them. They were constantly seeking new information and better evidence – especially disconfirming evidence.”

— Adam M. Grant

80. “Consider the four responses to dissatisfaction: exit, voice, persistence, and neglect. Only exit and voice improve your circumstances.”

— Adam M. Grant

81. “A fundamental lesson of desirability bias is that our beliefs are shaped by our motivations. What we believe depends on what we want to believe.”

— Adam M. Grant

82. “The greatest shapers don’t stop at introducing originality into the world. They create cultures that unleash originality in others.”

— Adam M. Grant

83. “When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, our first instinct isn’t usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment.”

— Adam M. Grant

84. “When we’re trying to influence others and we discover that they don’t respect us, it fuels a vicious cycle of resentment. In an effort to assert our own authority, we respond by resorting to increasingly disrespectful behaviors.”

— Adam M. Grant

85. “The Tennessee experiment contained a startling result. Chetty was able to predict the success that students achieved as adults simply by looking at who taught their kindergarten class. By age 25, students who happened to have had more experienced kindergarten teachers were earning significantly more money than their peers.”

— Adam M. Grant

86. “Rice professor Erik Dane finds that the more expertise and experience people gain, the more entrenched they become in a particular way of viewing the world. He points to studies showing that expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed, and that expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law. As we gain knowledge about a domain, we become prisoners of our prototypes.”

— Adam M. Grant

87. “There’s a lot a vacation can do: help you unwind, see some different-looking squirrels, but it cannot fix deeper issues, like how you behave in group settings. We can take you on a hike. We cannot turn you into someone who likes hiking. Remember, you’re still gonna be you on vacation. If you are sad where you are, and then you get on a plane to Italy, the you in Italy will be the same sad you from before, just in a new place.”

— Adam M. Grant

88. “When we lack the knowledge and skills to achieve excellence, we sometimes lack the knowledge and skills to judge excellence.”

— Adam M. Grant

89. “Otherish givers may appear less altruistic than selfless givers, but their resilience against burnout enables them to contribute more.”

— Adam M. Grant

90. “In a productive conversation, people treat their feelings as a rough draft.”

— Adam M. Grant

91. “In a cult, core values are dogma.”

— Adam M. Grant

92. “They know in their hearts that failing would yield less regret than failing to try.”

— Adam M. Grant

93. “Acknowledging complexity doesn’t make speakers and writers less convincing; it makes them more credible. It doesn’t lose viewers and readers; it maintains their engagement while stoking their curiosity.”

— Adam M. Grant

94. “Originality comes not from people who match the culture, but from those who enrich it.”

— Adam M. Grant

95. “Indeed, Cialdini finds that people donate more money to charity when the phrase “even a penny will help” is added to a request.”

— Adam M. Grant

96. “At work, our sense of commitment and control depends more on our direct boss than on anyone else. When we have a supportive boss, our bond with the organization strengthens and we feel a greater span of influence. As.”

— Adam M. Grant

97. “The least favorite students were the non-conformists who made up their own rules. Teachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as troublemakers. In.”

— Adam M. Grant

98. “Her confidence wasn’t in her existing knowledge – it was in her capacity to learn.”

— Adam M. Grant

99. “In these pages, I learned that great creators don’t necessarily have the deepest expertise but rather seek out the broadest perspectives.”

— Adam M. Grant

100. “Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart.”

— Adam M. Grant