Adam Grant Quotes
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The more important argument against grade curves is that they create an atmosphere that's toxic by pitting students against one another. At best, it creates a hypercompetitive culture, and at worst, it sends students the message that the world is a zero-sum game: Your success means my failure.
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For years, I believed that anything worth doing was worth doing early. In graduate school, I submitted my dissertation two years in advance. In college, I wrote my papers weeks early and finished my thesis four months before the due date. My roommates joked that I had a productive form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.
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When you're good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.
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Some of the greatest moments in human history were fueled by emotional intelligence.
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I spend a lot of my time trying to help leaders build cultures of productive givers.
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When people are depending on us, we end up finding strength we didn't know we had.
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Some people are selfish in all of their relationships. Those people are called sociopaths.
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I want my children to know that we often become resilient for others.
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We have many identities, and we can't be authentic to them all. The best we can do is be sincere in our efforts to earn the values we claim.
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To grow, people need to be challenged.
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Perhaps gaining power doesn't cause people to act like takers. It simply creates the opportunity for people who think like takers to express themselves.
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It's ironic that when you go through a tragedy, you appreciate more. You realize how fragile life is and that there are so many things to still be thankful for.
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The most promising ideas begin from novelty and then add familiarity.
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When you develop a reputation for being responsive and generous, an ever-expanding mountain of requests will come your way.
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Authenticity is a virtue. But just as you can have too little authenticity, you can also have too much.
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In the conversation about women in leadership, male voices are noticeably absent.
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When takers talk about mistakes, they're usually quick to place the blame on other people. Givers are more likely to say 'Here's the mistake I made; I learned the following from it. Here are the steps I'm taking to make sure I don't let people down in the future.'
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If you don't hire originals, you run the risk of people disagreeing but not voicing their dissent.
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If you've ever had a coworker actively interfere with your productivity, try to make you look bad, steal your ideas, or give you false information, you've been the victim of undermining.
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As more women 'lean in' and we collectively continue to fight sexism, there's another barrier to progress that hasn't been addressed: Many men who would like to see more women leaders are afraid to speak up about it.
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When young women get called bossy, it's often because they're trying to exercise power without status. It's not a problem that they're being dominant; the backlash arises because they're overstepping their status.
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In life, there's no such thing as an unmitigated good.
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Being a magician taught me how powerful the element of surprise can be. In each book, I've tried to work that in - an unexpected twist in a story that reveals an insight, a counter intuitive study that turns your beliefs upside-down.