Carol Dweck Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

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
For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value.

Carol Dweck
Choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems. There are no problem-free candidates.

Carol Dweck
The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset.

Carol Dweck
It's for you to decide whether change is right for you right now. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But either way keep the growth mindset in your thoughts then when you bump up against obstacles you can turn to it, it will always be there for you showing you a path into the future.

Carol Dweck
Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?

Carol Dweck
Research shows that normal young children misbehave every three minutes.

Carol Dweck
What can I learn from this? What will I do next time I'm in this situation?

Carol Dweck
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
What did you learn today? What mistake did you make that taught you something? What did you try hard at today?

Carol Dweck
I believe ability can get you to the top, says coach John Wooden, but it takes character to keep you there.… It's so easy to … begin thinking you can just 'turn it on' automatically, without proper preparation. It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you're there. When you read about an athlete or team that wins over and over and over, remind yourself, 'More than ability, they have character.'

Carol Dweck
We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don't like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.

Carol Dweck
Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort? If so, he says, You may be outscored but you will never lose.

Carol Dweck
Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning.

Carol Dweck
When people already know they're deficient, they have nothing to lose by trying.

Carol Dweck
Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.

Carol Dweck
I don't mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I've done as well as I possibly could.

Carol Dweck
You're in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way.

Carol Dweck
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. That way, their children don't have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.

Carol Dweck
When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world (the world of fixed traits) success is about proving you're smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other (the world of changing qualities) it's about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

Carol Dweck
So what should we say when children complete a task—say, math problems—quickly and perfectly? Should we deny them the praise they have earned? Yes. When this happens, I say, Whoops. I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Let's do something you can really learn from!

Carol Dweck
Why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?

Carol Dweck
Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going.

Carol Dweck
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