Think Again Quotes

“The single most important driver of forecasters’ success was how often they updated their beliefs. The best forecasters went through more rethinking cycles. They had the confident humility to doubt their judgments and the curiosity to discover new information that led them to revise their predictions.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe. Values are your core principles in life—they might be excellence and generosity, freedom and fairness, or security and integrity. Basing your identity on these kinds of principles enables you to remain open-minded about the best ways to advance them.”
― 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.” Attachment. That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The inner dictator manages to prevail by activating an overconfidence cycle. First, our wrong opinions are shielded in filter bubbles, where we feel pride when we see only information that supports our convictions. Then our beliefs are sealed in echo chambers, where we hear only from people who intensify and validate them.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The technical term for this in psychology is the totalitarian ego, and its job is to keep out threatening information.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When a core belief is questioned, though, we tend to shut down rather than open up. It’s as if there’s a miniature dictator living inside our heads,”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When an idea or assumption doesn’t matter deeply to us, we’re often excited to question it. The natural sequence of emotions is surprise (“Really?”) followed by curiosity (“Tell me more!”) and thrill (“Whoa!”). To paraphrase a line attributed to Isaac Asimov, great discoveries often begin not with “Eureka!” but with “That’s funny”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“sociologist Murray Davis argued that when ideas survive, it’s not because they’re true—it’s because they’re interesting. What makes an idea interesting is that it challenges our weakly held opinions”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The goal is not to be wrong more often. It’s to recognize that we’re all wrong more often than we’d like to admit, and the more we deny it, the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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

“Research shows that when people are resistant to change, it helps to reinforce what will stay the same. Visions for change are more compelling when they include visions of continuity. Although our strategy might evolve, our identity will endure.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Our convictions can lock us in prisons of our own making. The solution is not to decelerate our thinking—it’s to accelerate our rethinking.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The brighter you are, the harder it can be to see your own limitations. Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see. These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Yet if the empirical pattern clashes with your ideology, math prowess is no longer an asset; it actually becomes a liability. The better you are at crunching numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analyzing patterns that contradict your views. If they were liberals, math geniuses did worse than their peers at evaluating evidence that gun bans failed. If they were conservatives, they did worse at assessing evidence that gun bans worked.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents. The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When a company takes a nosedive like that, we can never pinpoint a single cause of its downfall, so we tend to anthropomorphize it: BlackBerry failed to adapt. Yet adapting to a changing environment isn’t something a company does—it’s something people do in the multitude of decisions they make every day.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Even our great governing document, the U.S. Constitution, allows for amendments. What if we were quicker to make amendments to our own mental constitutions?”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When it comes to our knowledge and opinions, though, we tend to stick to our guns. Psychologists call this seizing and freezing. We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt, and we let our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995. We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“When a trio of psychologists conducted a comprehensive review of thirty-three studies, they found that in every one, the majority of answer revisions were from wrong to right. This phenomenon is known as the first-instinct fallacy.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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. A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Thinking again can help you generate new solutions to old problems and revisit old solutions to new problems. It’s a path to learning more from the people around you and living with fewer regrets. A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools—and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“At some point, you’ve probably heard that if you drop a frog in a pot of scalding hot water, it will immediately leap out. But if you drop the frog in lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, the frog will die. It lacks the ability to rethink the situation, and doesn’t realize the threat until it’s too late.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools—and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“might add that it doesn’t become the truth just because you believe it. It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“The single most important driver of forecasters’29 success was how often they updated their beliefs. The best forecasters went through more rethinking cycles.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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

“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. In fact, when I argue with someone, it’s not a display of disrespect—it’s a sign of respect. It means I value their views enough to contest them. If their opinions didn’t matter to me, I wouldn’t bother. I know I have chemistry with someone when we find it delightful to prove each other wrong.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“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

“Scientific thinking favors humility over pride, doubt over certainty, curiosity over closure. When we shift out of scientist mode, the rethinking cycle breaks down, giving way to an overconfidence cycle. If we’re preaching, we can’t see gaps in our knowledge: we believe we’ve already found the truth. Pride breeds conviction rather than doubt, which makes us prosecutors: we might be laser-focused on changing other people’s minds, but ours is set in stone. That launches us into confirmation bias and desirability bias.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know