The Genius in All of Us Quotes

“You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes. “You will have to adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition, not just for a few weeks or months but for years and years and years. You have to want it so bad that you are not only ready to fail, but you actually want to experience failure: revel in it, learn from it.”
― David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong

“It’s not that I’m so smart,” Albert Einstein once said. “It’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Einstein’s simple statement is a clarion call for all who seek greatness, for themselves or their children. In the end, persistence is the difference between mediocrity and enormous success.”
― David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ

“Because talent is a function of acquired skills rather than innate ability, adult achievement depends completely on long-term attitude and resources and process rather than any particular age-based talent quotient.”
― David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ

“Deliberate practice requires a mind-set of never, ever, being satisfied with your current ability. It requires a constant self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one’s capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and again.”
― David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ

“    Regardless of whether a child seems to be exceptional, mediocre, or even awful at any particular skill at a particular point in time, the potential exists for that”
― David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ

“Our model of savant abilities suggests that our brains operate at two levels, the quantum and the classical. These two levels are no more exclusionary than classical (or Newtonian) physics and quantum mechanics. One major difference between them is that the forces in classical physics operate locally, whereas forces in quantum physics operate nonlocally. Both types of forces operate in our brains, which is why our brains can process consciousness both locally and nonlocally. Some people have conditions such as autism that shift the balance between local and nonlocal processes by knocking out the functioning of the neocortex. The rest of us can decrease this classical dominance by such mind-quieting practices as meditation.”
― David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ

“Finally, often as we relax or “tune out” other distractions, sometime after “retirement” for example, some previously hidden, latent interests, talents or abilities quite suddenly, and surprisingly, emerge. Sometimes that emergence is actually a re-kindling of some earlier childhood abilities, such as art, for whatever reason set aside with maturation and “growing up.”
― David Shenk, The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ