“The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed.” – Adam Grant
76 Adam Grant Quotes
- “Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity.”
2. “If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.”
3. “Knowledge is best sought from experts, but creativity and wisdom can come from anywhere.”
4. “When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks.”
5. “We often favor feeling right, over being right.”
6. “Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.”
7. “Complex problems like pandemics, climate change, and political polarisation call on us to stay mentally flexible.”
8. “Originality is not a fixed trait. It is a free choice.”
9. “Saying no frees you up to say yes when it matters most.”
10. “When a salesperson truly cares about you, trust forms, and you’re more likely to buy, come back for repeat business, and refer new customers.”
11. “When people are depending on us, we end up finding strength we didn’t know we had.”
12. “The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed.”
Famous Adam Grant Quotes
13. “When we’re determined to reach an objective, it’s the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us.”
14. “If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.”
15. “You don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility.”
16. “Progress always involves risk. You can’t steal second and keep one foot on first base.”
17. “Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.”
18. “I believe that the most meaningful way to succeed is to help other people succeed.”
19. “Negative relationships are unpleasant but predictable.”
20. “Success doesn’t measure a human being, effort does.”
21. “Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps.”
22. “That’s the nature of Power, today: Change, or be changed. Learn to Thrive in a networked world, or Fall.”
23. “By looking on the bright side, we’ll activate enthusiasm and turn on the go system.”
24. “If you wanted to be original the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.”
Adam Grant Quotes About Success
25. “Authenticity is a virtue. But just as you can have too little authenticity, you can also have too much.”
26. “When a salesperson truly cares about you, trust forms, and you’re more likely to buy, come back for repeat business, and refer new customers.”
27. “I spend a lot of my time trying to help leaders build cultures of productive givers.”
28. “If an organization values innovation, you can assume it’s safe to speak up with new ideas, leaders will listen, and your voice matters.”
29. “To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and invite them into the conversation.”
30. “Instead of assuming that emotional intelligence is always useful, we need to think more carefully about where and when it matters.”
31. “Timing accounted for forty-two percent of the difference between success and failure.”
32. “Success doesn’t measure a human being; effort does.”
33. “If you want to be a generous giver, you have to watch out for selfish takers.”
34. “Leaders who don’t have time to read are leaders who don’t make time to learn.”
35. “When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more.”
36. “Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.”
37. “The most promising ideas begin from novelty and then add familiarity.”
38. “When you develop a reputation for being responsive and generous, an ever-expanding mountain of requests will come your way.”
39. “Highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck.”
40. “To become original, you have to try something new, which means accepting some measure of risk.”
41. “Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another.”
Adam Grant Quotes on Change and originality
42. “That’s the nature of Power today: Change, or be changed. Learn to Thrive in a networked world, or fall.”
43. “Many people fail to achieve originality because they generate a few ideas and then obsess about refining them to perfection.”
44. “Gaining insight and perspective is not about the number of years you’ve lived. It’s about the number of lessons you’ve learned.”
45. “Negative feedback can make people feel inferior.”
46. “Geniuses don’t have better ideas than the rest of us. They just have more of them.”
47. “There’s a wealth of evidence that people want to do meaningful work.”
46. “To generate creative ideas, it’s important to start from an unusual place. But to explain those ideas, they have to be connected to something familiar.”
47. “Being original doesn’t require being first. It just means being different and better.”
48. “And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.”
49. “We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.”
50. “Uncertainty primes us to ask questions and absorb new ideas.”
51. “Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another.”
52. “When you’re dealing with an ambivalent relationship, you’re constantly on guard, grappling with questions of trust.”
53. “The mark of higher education isn’t the knowledge you accumulate in your head. It’s the skills you gain about how to learn.”
54. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
56. “It’s easier to win if everybody wants you to win. If you don’t make enemies out there, it’s easier to succeed.”
57. “The fear of being judged as weak or naïve prevents many people from operating like givers at work.”
58. “Your antidote to burnout is not necessarily less work. It could be more meaning.”
Thought-Provoking Adam Grant Quotes
59. “Geniuses don’t have better ideas than the rest of us. They just have more of them.”
60. “Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.”
61. “No one wants to hear everything that’s in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.”
62. “Being original doesn’t require being first. It just means being different and better.”
63. “Enemies make better allies than frenemies.”
64. “If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us.”
65. “Procrastinate strategically. Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity but it can be a valuable resource for creativity.”
66. “After all, the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.”
67. “Frenemies are worse than enemies, and it’s not just in the workplace”
68. “Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.”
69. “When people are resistant to change, it helps to reinforce what will stay the same”
70. “If we want people to vote, we need to make it a larger part of their self-image.”
71. “Changing your mind doesn’t make you a flip-flopper or a hypocrite. It means you were open to learning.”
72. “If you want to find out if someone’s a taker, it’s not actually that useful to know what they’ve accomplished. What you want to want to know is how they explain them.”
73. “Our intuitions are only accurate in domains where we have a lot of experience.”
74. “For women to achieve equal representation in leadership roles, it’s important that they have the backing of men as well as women.”
75. “Focus attention and energy on making a difference in the lives of others, and success might follow as a by-product.”
76. “If you don’t hire originals, you run the risk of people disagreeing but not voicing their dissent.”
Adam Grant, an American author of popular science books and a professor of organizational psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, was born on August 13, 1981.
He graduated from Harvard College with a B.A., and the University of Michigan awarded him M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in organizational psychology. He worked as a professional magician during college.
A Must Read: Think Again: The Power Of Knowing What You Don’T Know by Adam Grant
