Think Again Quotes

“Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re impostors. They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight. They don’t boast about how much they know; they marvel at how little they understand. They’re aware that each answer raises new questions, and the quest for knowledge is never finished.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

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

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

“In high school, students who admit when they don’t know something are rated by teachers as learning more effectively and by peers as contributing more to their teams.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Kjirste hasn’t just figured out how to erase the pain of being wrong. She’s transformed it into a source of pleasure. She landed there through a form of classical conditioning, like when Pavlov’s dog learned to salivate at the sound of a bell. If being wrong repeatedly leads us to the right answer, the experience of being wrong itself can become joyful.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“It’s also worth noting, though, how unusual that level of rethinking is. How many of us can even remember the last time we admitted being wrong and revised our opinions accordingly? As journalist 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, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Most of us are accustomed to defining ourselves in terms of our beliefs, ideas, and ideologies. This can become a problem when it prevents us from changing our minds as the world changes and knowledge evolves. Our opinions can become so sacred that we grow hostile to the mere thought of being wrong, and the totalitarian ego leaps in to silence counterarguments, squash contrary evidence, and close the door on learning.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Danny isn’t interested in preaching, prosecuting, or politicking. He’s a scientist devoted to the truth. When I asked him how he stays in that mode, he said he refuses to let his beliefs become part of his identity. “I change my mind at a speed that drives my collaborators crazy,” he explained. “My attachment to my ideas is provisional. There’s no unconditional love for them.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“important to us and might be difficult to change. The totalitarian ego steps in like a bodyguard for our minds, protecting our self-image by feeding us comforting lies. They’re all just jealous. You’re really, really, ridiculously good-looking. You’re on the verge of inventing the next Pet Rock. As physicist Richard Feynman quipped, “You must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Second, impostor thoughts can motivate us to work smarter. When we don’t believe we’re going to win, we have nothing to lose by rethinking our strategy. Remember that total beginners don’t fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Feeling like an impostor puts us in a beginner’s mindset, leading us to question assumptions that others have taken for granted.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“We all have notions of who we want to be and how we hope to lead our lives. They’re not limited to careers; from an early age, we develop ideas about where we’ll live, which school we’ll attend, what kind of person we’ll marry, and how many kids we’ll have. These images can inspire us to set bolder goals and guide us toward a path to achieve them. The danger of these plans is that they can give us tunnel vision, blinding us to alternative possibilities. We don’t know how time and circumstances will change what we want and even who we want to be, and locking our life GPS onto a single target can give us the right directions to the wrong destination.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“As Jeff Bezos explained it in an annual shareholder letter, instead of demanding convincing results, experiments start with asking people to make bets. “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it?” The goal in a learning culture is to welcome these kinds of experiments, to make rethinking so familiar that it becomes routine.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Process accountability might sound like the opposite of psychological safety, but they’re actually independent. Amy Edmondson finds that when psychological safety exists without accountability, people tend to stay within their comfort zone, and when there’s accountability but not safety, people tend to stay silent in an anxiety zone. When we combine the two, we create a learning zone. People feel free to experiment—and to poke holes in one another’s experiments in service of making them better. They become a challenge network.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices, no longer curious about where it’s imperfect and where it could improve. Organizational learning should be an ongoing activity, but best practices imply it has reached an endpoint. We might be better off looking for better practices.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When trust runs deep in a team, people might not feel the need to question their colleagues or double-check their own work.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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

“While humility is a permeable filter that absorbs life experience and converts it into knowledge and wisdom, arrogance is a rubber shield that life experience simply bounces off of.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Rethinking is more likely to happen in a learning culture, where growth is the core value and rethinking cycles are routine. In learning cultures, the norm is for people to know what they don’t know, doubt their existing practices, and stay curious about new routines to try out.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Ultimately, education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Whomever we’re educating, we can express more humility, exude more curiosity, and introduce the children in our lives to the infectious joy of discovery.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“He invited them to show humility and curiosity, framing their suggestions in terms of questions like “I’d love to hear why . . .” and “Have you considered . .”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Quality means rethinking, reworking, and polishing,”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“I need time for my confusion.” Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Achieving excellence in school often requires mastering old ways of thinking. Building an influential career demands new ways of thinking. 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.” That’s”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Rethinking needs to become a regular habit. Unfortunately, traditional methods of education don’t always allow students to form that habit.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Nuance: This isn’t to say that emotional intelligence is useless. Caveats: As better tests of emotional intelligence are designed, our knowledge may change. Contingencies: For now, the best available evidence suggests that emotional intelligence is not a panacea. Let’s recognize it for what it is: a set of skills that can be beneficial in situations where emotional information is rich or vital.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When we succeed in changing someone’s mind, we shouldn’t only ask whether we’re proud of what we’ve achieved. We should also ask whether we’re proud of how we’ve achieved it.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Motivational interviewing starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity. We don’t know what might motivate someone else to change, but we’re genuinely eager to find out. The goal isn’t to tell people what to do; it’s to help them break out of overconfidence cycles and see new possibilities.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“they developed the core principles of a practice called motivational interviewing. The central premise is that we can rarely motivate someone else to change. We’re better off helping them find their own motivation to change.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“We become more certain of our opinions and less curious about alternative views. Counterarguments no longer surprise us or stump us—we have our rebuttals ready.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know