Think Again Quotes

“The first upside of feeling like an impostor is that it can motivate us to work harder. It’s probably not helpful when we’re deciding whether to start a race, but once we’ve stepped up to the starting line, it gives us the drive to keep running to the end so that we can earn our place among the finalists.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“What he lacked is a crucial nutrient for the mind: humility. The antidote to getting stuck on Mount Stupid is taking a regular dose of it. “Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction,”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“If you present information without permission, no one will listen to you.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Thinking like a scientist involves more than just reacting with an open mind. It means being actively open-minded.27 It requires searching for reasons why we might be wrong—not for reasons why we must be right—and revising our views based on what we learn.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Mental horsepower doesn’t guarantee mental dexterity. No matter how much brainpower you have, if you lack the motivation to change your mind, you’ll miss many occasions to think again. 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.21 And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are,22 the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Progress is impossible without change;1 and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn.3 Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“first-instinct fallacy.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“After seeing their interactions up close, I finally understood what had long felt like a contradiction in my own personality: how I could be highly agreeable and still cherish a good argument. Agreeableness is about seeking social harmony, not cognitive consensus. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Although I’m terrified of hurting other people’s feelings, when it comes to challenging their thoughts, I have no fear.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“I’ve learned that it’s important to consider their values along with their personalities—I’m looking for disagreeable people who are givers, not takers. Disagreeable givers often make the best critics: their intent is to elevate the work, not feed their own egos. They don’t criticize because they’re insecure; they challenge because they care. They dish out tough love.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Georgians have shemomedjamo, the feeling of being completely full but eating anyway because the meal is so good.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Over time, though, rethinking who you are appears to become mentally healthy—as long as you can tell a coherent story about how you got from past to present you.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“I’ve watched too many leaders shield themselves from task conflict. As they gain power, they tune out boat-rockers and listen to bootlickers. They become politicians, surrounding themselves with agreeable yes-men and becoming more susceptible to seduction by sycophants. Research reveals that when their firms perform poorly, CEOs who indulge flattery and conformity become overconfident. They stick to their existing strategic plans instead of changing course—which sets them on a collision course with failure.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Our ways of thinking become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In an analysis of over 40 million tweets, Americans were more likely than Canadians to use words like sh*t, b*tch, hate, and damn, while Canadians favored more agreeable words like thanks, great, good, and sure.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Eager to have a jaw-clenching, emotionally fraught argument about abortion? How about immigration, the death penalty, or climate change? If you think you can handle it, head for the second floor of a brick building on the Columbia University campus in New York. It’s the home of the Difficult Conversations Lab.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“She understood that knowledge is best sought from experts, but creativity and wisdom can come from anywhere.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Confidence is a measure of how much you believe in yourself. Evidence shows that’s distinct from how much you believe in your methods. You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence. We become blinded by arrogance when we’re utterly convinced of our strengths and our strategies. We get paralyzed by doubt when we lack conviction in both. We can be consumed by an inferiority complex when we know the right method but feel uncertain about our ability to execute it. What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Advancing from novice to amateur can break the rethinking cycle. As we gain experience, we lose some of our humility. We take pride in making rapid progress, which promotes a false sense of mastery.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions. —Oscar Wilde”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In hindsight, identity foreclosure is a Band-Aid: it covers up an identity crisis, but fails to cure it.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In career choices, identity foreclosure often begins when adults ask kids: what do you want to be when you grow up? Pondering that question can foster a fixed mindset about work and self. “I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child,” Michelle Obama writes. “What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“It takes confident humility to admit that we’re a work in progress. It shows that we care more about improving ourselves than proving ourselves.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“I’m curious: do you agree? If not, what evidence would change your mind?”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“I’ve seen is at Amazon, where important decisions aren’t made based on simple PowerPoint presentations. They’re informed by a six-page memo that lays out a problem, the different approaches that have been considered in the past, and how the proposed solutions serve the customer. At the start of the meeting, to avoid groupthink, everyone reads the memo silently. This isn’t practical in every situation, but it’s paramount when choices are both consequential and irreversible.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“My job is to think again about how we work, lead, and live—and enable others to do the same.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“It’s not hard to see why a boring lecture would fail, but even captivating lectures can fall short for a less obvious, more concerning reason. Lectures aren’t designed to accommodate dialogue or disagreement; they turn students into passive receivers of information rather than active thinkers.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“This is part of a broader movement to teach kids to think like fact-checkers: the guidelines include (1) “interrogate information instead of simply consuming it,” (2) “reject rank and popularity as a proxy for reliability,” and (3) “understand that the sender of information is often not its source.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The focus is less on being right, and more on building the skills to consider different views and argue productively about them.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“That’s what kids really need: frequent practice at unlearning, especially when it comes to the mechanisms of how cause and effect work.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know