Inspiring quotes reflecting the Growth Mindset

  1. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed no hope at all. Dale Carnegie
  2. Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Samuel Johnson
  3. It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. Confucius
  4. You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. Margaret Thatcher
  5. Dreams don’t work unless you do. John C. Maxwell
  6. Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. Thomas Watson
  7. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
  8. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. Albert Einstein
  9. Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. Joshua J. Marine
  10. Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw
  11. Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success. Oscar Wilde
  12. Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not. Virgil Garnett Thomson
  13. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. Henry Ford
  14. The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss. Thomas Carlyle
  15. Most people never run far enough on the first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got, and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you. William James
  16. Don’t tell me how talented you are. Tell me how hard you work. Artur Rubenstein
  17. Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. Ralph Waldo Emerson
  18. After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years, people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them. Marshall Goldsmith
  19. The real fault is to have faults and not to amend them. Confucius
  20. If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot. Confucius
  21. When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps. Confucius
  22. Before the beginning of brilliance, there must be great chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd. from I Ching written by Fu His
  23. There has to be this pioneer, the individual with the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile that is new and different. Alfred P. Sloan
  24. When the world says, ‘Give up,’ Hope whispers, ‘Try one more time.’ Unknown
  25. It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. Walt Disney
  26. To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable. Erich Fromm
  27. Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. Erich Fromm
  28. Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try. Unknown
  29. Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. Napoleon Hill
  30. How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
  31. You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end. Sidney A. Friedman
  32. Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk. Shirley Hurstedler
  33. The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake. Elbert Hubbard
  34. Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could … Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Ralph Waldo Emerson
  35. He who wrestles with us, strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skills. Our antagonist is our helper. Edmund Burke
  36. Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill
  37. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the ones you did. Mark Twain
  38. The problem human beings face is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed. Michelangelo
  39. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Richard P.Feynman
  40. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. Viktor E. Frankl
  41. Whenever an individual or business decides that success has been attained, progress stops. Thomas J. Watson
  42. Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good. Alan Weiss
  43. We find comfort among those who agree with us, and growth among those who don’t. Frank A. Clark
  44. The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year. John Foster Dulles
  45. No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. Voltaire
  46. Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible. Miguel Unamuno
  47. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. Elizabeth Gilbert
  48. A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake. Confucius
  49. Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. Winston Churchill
  50. The only true failure lies in the failure to start. Harold Blake Walker
  51. Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must also step up the stairs. Vaclac Havel
  52. By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind. Hui Neng
  53. In criticizing, the teacher is hoping to teach. That’s all. Bankei
  54. When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Maynard Keynes
  55. A genius! For 37 years I’ve practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius! Pablo Sarasate
  56. Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. Franklin P. Jones
  57. The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself. Wallace Wattles
  58. It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. Albert Einstein
  59. Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. Clayton Christensen
  60. To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. Unknown
  61. Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be. J. W. Goethe
  62. Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be. Samuel Johnson
  63. Failure is success if we learn from it. Malcolm Forbes
  64. A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. Walter Gagehot
  65. History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. B.C. Forbes
  66. Don’t worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try. Sherman Finesilver
  67. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Thomas Edison
  68. Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. Winston Churchill
  69. It takes 20 years to make an overnight success. Eddie Cantor
  70. Unless you’re willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen. Phillip Adams
  71. Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend’s success without envy. Aeschylus
  72. The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success. H.W. Arnold
  73. What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination. Unknown
  74. Everybody dies, but not everybody lives. A Sachs
  75. There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy. Albert Ellis
  76. The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. Albert Ellis
  77. I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs. Albert Ellis
  78. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So. . .sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover. Mark Twain
  79. It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Elliot
  80. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou
  81. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. E.E. Cummings
  82. Knowing what is and knowing what can be are not the same thing. Ellen Langer
  83. We should open ourselves to the impossible and embrace a psychology of possibility. Ellen Langer
  84. Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility. Ellen Langer
  85. There is always a step small enough from where we are to get us to where we want to be. If we take that small step, there’s always another we can take, and eventually a goal thought to be too far to reach becomes achievable. Ellen Langer
  86. Failure is not fatal, but failing to change might be. John Wooden
  87. Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being. John Wooden
  88. Nothing will work unless you do. John Wooden
  89. At God’s footstool to confess,
    A poor soul knelt and bowed his head.
    “I failed,” he cried. The Master said,
    “Thou didst thy best, that is success.”
    Unknown, but quoted by John Wooden
  90. The team that makes the most mistakes usually wins. Piggy Lambert, Purdue basketball coach
  91. There isn’t a person anywhere who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can. Henry Ford

And here are some Growth Mindset quotes from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The new psychology of success:

  1. I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. . .I divide the world into the learners and the non-learners. Benjamin Barber
  2. This is hard. This is fun. Carol Dweck summing up the Growth Mindset
  3. Ask ‘How will they learn best?’ not ‘Can they learn?’ Jaime Escalante
  4. Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you where a student could end up. Carol Dweck
  5. Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning. Carol Dweck
  6. Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training. Carol Dweck
  7. Wow, that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard. Carol Dweck demonstrating Growth Mindset praise
  8. There is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me. Jackie Joyner-Kersee
  9. A company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive. Carol Dweck
  10. I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.’ Andrew Carnegie
  11. If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. Carol Dweck
  12. If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it. Marva Collins
  13. You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By becoming a little better each and every day, over a period of time, you will become a lot better. John Wooden
  14. You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way. Carol Dweck
  15. Vowing, even intense vowing, is often useless. The next day comes and the next day goes. What works is making a vivid, concrete plan. Carol Dweck on Gollwitzer’s research findings
  16. What did you learn today? What mistake did you make that taught you something? What did you try hard at today? Carol Dweck on the growth mindset
  17. What can I learn from this? What will I do next time I’m in this situation? Carol Dweck on handling setbacks the growth mindset way
About Anne Austin

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