Top 160 Adam M. Grant Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Requiring proof is an enemy of progress.”

— Adam M. Grant

102. “When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be. – attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, physicist, biologist, and artist.”

— Adam M. Grant

103. “All it took was having them spend their initial six minutes a little differently: instead of adopting a managerial mindset for evaluating ideas, they got into a creative mindset by generating ideas themselves. Just.”

— Adam M. Grant

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

— Adam M. Grant

105. “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

106. “The less intelligent we are in a particular domain, the more we seem to overestimate our actual intelligence in that domain.”

— Adam M. Grant

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

— Adam M. Grant

108. “Those only are happy,” philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, “who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.”

— Adam M. Grant

109. “Kathryn Schulz observes, “Although small amounts of evidence are sufficient to make us draw conclusions, they are seldom sufficient to make us revise them.”

— Adam M. Grant

110. “It shows that we care more about improving ourselves than proving ourselves.”

— Adam M. Grant

111. “To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand.”

— Adam M. Grant

112. “Research shows that takers harbor doubts about others’ intentions, so they monitor vigilantly for information that others might harm them, treating others with suspicion and distrust. These low expectations trigger a vicious cycle, constraining the development and motivation of others. Even when takers are impressed by another person’s capabilities or motivation, they’re more likely to see this person as a threat, which means they’re less willing to support and develop him or her.”

— Adam M. Grant

113. “When we’re determined to reach an objective, it’s the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us.”

— Adam M. Grant

114. “When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them. Before women gained the right to vote in America, many “had never before considered their degraded status as anything but natural,” historian.”

— Adam M. Grant

115. “In one study, parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of less than one rule and tended to “place emphasis on moral values, rather than on specific rules,” psychologist Teresa Amabile reports.”

— Adam M. Grant

116. “On matters of style, swim with the current,” Thomas Jefferson allegedly advised, but “on matters of principle, stand like a rock.” The pressure to achieve leads us to do the opposite. We find surface ways of appearing original – donning a bow tie, wearing bright red shoes – without taking the risk of actually being original. When it comes to the powerful ideas in our heads and the core values in our hearts, we censor ourselves.”

— Adam M. Grant

117. “The more successful people have been in the past, the worse they perform when they enter a new environment.”

— Adam M. Grant

118. “To get Firefox or Chrome, you have to demonstrate some resourcefulness and download a different browser. Instead of accepting the default, you take a bit of initiative to seek out an option that might be better. And that act of initiative, however tiny, is a window into what you do at work.”

— Adam M. Grant

119. “Now that you have a bit of respect, you value your standing in the group and don’t want to jeopardize it. To maintain and then gain status, you play a game of follow-the-leader, conforming to prove your worth as a group member. As.”

— Adam M. Grant

120. “Good explanations enable children to develop a code of ethics that often coincides with societal expectations; when they don’t square up, children rely on the internal compass of values rather than the external compass of rules.”

— Adam M. Grant

121. “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

122. “If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative,” Steve Jobs said back in 1982, “you have to not have the same bag of experience as everyone else does.” Working.”

— Adam M. Grant

123. “Three decades of research show that receiving support from colleagues is a robust antidote to burnout.”

— Adam M. Grant

124. “But there’s something distinctive that happens when givers succeed: it spreads and cascades.”

— Adam M. Grant

125. “Lectures aren’t designed to accommodate dialogue or disagreement; they turn students into passive receivers of information rather than active thinkers.”

— Adam M. Grant

126. “Polarization is reinforced by conformity: peripheral members fit in and gain status by following the lead of the most prototypical member of the group, who often holds the most intense views.”

— Adam M. Grant

127. “What look like differences in natural ability are often differences in opportunity and motivation.”

— Adam M. Grant

128. “When I put up a slide that says ‘Here’s why you shouldn’t buy this company,’ the first response was laughter. Then you could see them physically relax. It’s sincere; it doesn’t smell, feel, or look anything like sales. They’re no longer being sold.”

— Adam M. Grant

129. “Takers tend to worry that revealing weaknesses will compromise their dominance and authority. Givers are much more comfortable expressing vulnerability: they’re interested in helping others, not gaining power over them, so they’re not afraid of exposing chinks in their armor. By making themselves vulnerable, givers can actually build prestige. But there’s a twist: expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker’s competence.”

— Adam M. Grant

130. “When our audiences are skeptical, the more we try to dominate them, the more they resist. Even with a receptive audience, dominance is a zero-sum game: the more power and authority I have, the less you have.”

— Adam M. Grant

131. “When our commitment is wavering, the best way to stay on track is to consider the progress we’ve already made. As we recognize what we’ve invested and attained, it seems like a waste to give up, and our confidence and commitment surge.”

— Adam M. Grant

132. “To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself,” Einstein lamented.”

— Adam M. Grant

133. “Ultimately, the people who choose to champion originality are the ones who propel us forward. After spending years studying them and interacting with them, I am struck that their inner experiences are not any different from our own. They feel the same fear, the same doubt, as the rest of us. What sets them apart is that they take action anyway. They know in their hearts that failing would yield less regret than failing to try.”

— Adam M. Grant

134. “Today, we have compelling evidence that interest precedes the development of talent. It turns out that motivation is the reason that people develop talent in the first place.”

— Adam M. Grant

135. “Exhausting someone in argument is not the same as convincing him. – Tim Kreider.”

— Adam M. Grant

136. “Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.” Albert Einstein.”

— Adam M. Grant

137. “We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.”

— Adam M. Grant

138. “If you’re seeking to unleash originality, here are some practical actions that you can take. The first steps are for individuals to generate, recognize, voice, and champion new ideas. The next set is for leaders to stimulate novel ideas and build cultures that welcome dissent. The final recommendations are for parents and teachers to help children become comfortable taking a creative or moral stand against the status quo.”

— Adam M. Grant

139. “When our audiences are skeptical, the more we try to dominate them, the more they resist.”

— Adam M. Grant

140. “An informed audience is going to spot the holes in our case anyway. We might as well get credit for having the humility to look for them, the foresight to spot them, and the integrity to acknowledge them.”

— Adam M. Grant

141. “How do you know? It’s a question we need to ask more often, both of ourselves and of others.”

— Adam M. Grant

142. “Originality is not a fixed trait. It is a free choice. Lincoln wasn’t born with an original personality. Taking on controversy wasn’t programmed into his DNA; it was an act of conscious will. As the great thinker W. E. B. DuBois wrote, “He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln.”

— Adam M. Grant

143. “If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.”

— Adam M. Grant

144. “Originals are people who take the initiative to make their visions a reality.”

— Adam M. Grant

145. “We prefer the regular photos of our friends, because that’s how we’re used to seeing them, but we like the inverted photos of ourselves, because that’s how we see ourselves when we look in the mirror. “Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt,” says serial entrepreneur Howard Tullman. “It breeds comfort.”

— Adam M. Grant

146. “One of the keys to cultivating grit is making the task at hand more interesting and motivating.”

— Adam M. Grant

147. “The more experiments you run, the less constrained you become by your ideas from the past. You.”

— Adam M. Grant

148. “What stands in the way of rethinking isn’t the expression of emotion; it’s a restricted range of emotion.”

— Adam M. Grant

149. “In a classic study of highly accomplished architects, the most creative ones graduated with a B average. Their straight-A counterparts were so determined to be right that they often failed to take the risk of rethinking the orthodoxy. A similar pattern emerged in a study of students who graduated at the top of their class. “Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s visionaries,” education researcher Karen Arnold explains. “They typically settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”

— Adam M. Grant

150. “This chapter is about when to speak up and how to do it effectively without jeopardizing our careers and relationships. What.”

— Adam M. Grant