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.

No matter what your current ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.

In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I'm going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here's a chance to grow.

Effort is one of those things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it.

The best thing parents can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning.

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

Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don't tell you where a student could end up.

Failure is information-we label it failure, but it's more like, 'This didn't work, I'm a problem solver, and I'll try something else.'

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

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

The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behavior. The right kind motivates students to learn.

A woman laughing is a woman conquered.

The love for money is only one among many.

Get around the right people. Associate with positive, goal-oriented people who encourage and inspire you.

Wars raged everywhere as men found new, inventive ways to kill even more of their race. It was like a contest, the many tribes of mankind competing to see who could commit the worst atrocities.

Trust yourself to do what you really feel like doing, and what you feel like doing will change. Don't, and it will plague you.

I want to be respected as an actor. There's my ego. But I don't have a great need to be liked by an audience.

Fighting for happiness is the hardest thing you'll ever fight for, but it's the only thing worth fighting for.

That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.

The further the fall, the greater the hurt.