This book emphasizes the need for open-minded and humble conversations in American political discourse.
It advocates for intellectual curiosity and understanding in debates instead of stubborn arguments.
The book is well-researched with engaging stories encouraging readers to re-examine their beliefs and approach discussions with a learning mindset.
Key takeaways include the importance of listening to others being open to new perspectives and recognizing the challenge of questioning deeply held beliefs especially on significant topics like religion and politics.
Here are some of the top quotes from Think Again book written by Adam Grant.
Best Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
We’re mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Good teachers introduce new thoughts, but great teachers introduce new ways of thinking. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Rethinking liberates us to do more than update our knowledge and opinions – it’s a tool for leading a more fulfilling life. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
After all, the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Once we hear the story and accept it as true, we rarely bother to question it. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we don’t know. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We all have blind spots in our knowledge and opinions. The bad news is that they can leave us blind to our blindness, which gives us false confidence in our judgment and prevents us from rethinking. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Also read: Quotes from Wolfpack and Greenlights Quotes by Matthew McConaughey.
Famous Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
In a heated argument with someone else, you can always stop and ask: ‘What evidence would change your mind?’ If the answer is ‘nothing,’ then there’s no point in continuing the debate. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
A good debate is not a war. It’s not even a tug-of-war, where you can drag your opponent to your side if you pull hard enough on the rope. It’s more like a dance that hasn’t been choreographed, negotiated with a partner who has a different set of steps in mind. If you try too hard to lead, your partner will resist. If you can adapt your moves to hers, and get her to do the same, you’re more likely to end up in rhythm. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
Every time we encounter new information, we have a choice. We can attach our opinions to our identities and stand our ground in the stubbornness of preaching and prosecuting. Or we can operate more like scientists, defining ourselves as people committed to the pursuit of truth – even if it means proving our own views wrong. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
It takes humility to reconsider our past commitments, doubt to question our present decisions, and curiosity to reimagine our future plans. What we discover along the way can free us from the shackles of our familiar surroundings and our former selves. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
The worst performers are the most overconfident. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
In a heated argument, you can always stop and ask, ‘What evidence would change your mind?’ If the answer is ‘nothing,’ then there’s no point in continuing the debate. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
What set great presidents apart was their intellectual curiosity and openness. They read widely and were as eager to learn about developments in biology, philosophy, architecture, and music as in domestic and foreign affairs. They were interested in hearing new views and revising their old ones. They saw many of their policies as experiments to run, not points to score.. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Focusing on results might be good for short-term performance, but it can be an obstacle to long-term learning. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
Top Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
At work and in life, the best we can do is plan for what we want to learn and contribute over the next year or two, and stay open to what might come next. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We don’t have to upend our entire paths to rethink some of our plans. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Confidence is just as often the result of progress as the cause of it. We don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise to achieve challenging goals. We can build it through achieving challenging goals. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
People often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
In driver’s training we were taught to identify our visual blind spots and eliminate them with the help of mirrors and sensors. In life, since our minds don’t come equipped with those tools, we need to learn to recognize our cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Vintage records, classic cars, and antique clocks might be valuable collectibles, but outdated facts are mental fossils that are best abandoned. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
In a productive conversation, people treat their feelings as a rough draft. Like art, emotions are works in progress. It rarely serves us well to frame our first sketch. As we gain perspective, we revise what we feel. Sometimes we even start over from scratch. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Powerful Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
Rethinking is a skill set, but it’s also a mindset. We already have many of the mental tools we need. We just have to remember to get them out of the shed and remove the rust. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Our identities are open systems, and so are our lives. We don’t have to stay tethered to old images of where we want to go or who we want to be. The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to question what we do daily. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. Humility is a reflective lens: it helps us see them clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
Inspirational Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
People gain humility when they reflect on how different circumstances could have led them to different beliefs. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We need to question our beliefs more readily than ever before. This is not an easy task. As we sit with our beliefs, they tend to become more extreme and more entrenched. I’m still struggling to accept that Pluto may not be a planet. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Ultimately, education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads. It’s the habits we develop as we keep revising our drafts and the skills we build to keep learning. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Stereotypes don’t have the structural integrity of a carefully built ship. They’re more like a tower in the game of Jenga – teetering on a small number of blocks, with some key supports missing. To knock it over, sometimes all we need to do is give it a poke. The hope is that people will rise to the occasion and build new beliefs on a stronger foundation. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Popular Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
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. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
The better you are at crunching numbers, the more spectacularly you fail at analyzing patterns that contradict your views. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Good judgment depends on having the skill – and the will – to open our minds. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re imposters. They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Wise Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
Our happiness often depends more on what we do than where we are. It’s our actions – not our surroundings – that bring us meaning and belonging. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We can all improve at thinking again. Whatever conclusion we reach, I think the world would be a better place if everyone put on scientist goggles a little more often. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Choosing a career isn’t like finding a soul mate. It’s possible that your ideal job hasn’t even been invented yet. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
When we’re trying to persuade people, we frequently take an adversarial approach. Instead of opening their minds, we effectively shut them down or rile them up. They play defense by putting up a shield, play offense by preaching their perspectives and prosecuting ours, or play politics by telling us what we want to hear without changing what they actually think. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
When we’re reading, listening, or watching, we can learn to recognize complexity as a signal of credibility. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
At the turn of the last century, the great hope for the internet was that it would expose us to different views. But as the web welcomed a few billion fresh voices and vantage points into the conversation, it also became a weapon of misinformation and disinformation. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Collecting a teacher’s knowledge may help us solve the challenges of the day, but understanding how a teacher thinks can help us navigate the challenges of a lifetime. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Confidence is a measure of how much you believe in yourself. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Whether or not we have the opportunity or appetite for major changes in our lives, it’s still possible to make smaller adjustments that breathe new meaning into our days. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
When it comes to careers, instead of searching for the job where we’ll be happiest, we might be better off pursuing the job where we expect to learn and contribute the most. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Kids might be better off learning about careers as actions to take rather than as identities to claim. When they see work as what they do rather than who they are, they become more open to exploring different possibilities. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
The less intelligent we are in a particular domain, the more we seem to overestimate our actual intelligence in that domain. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Thought-Provoking Quotes From Think Again by Adam Grant
Listening is a way of offering others our scarcest, most precious gift: our attention. Once we’ve demonstrated that we care about them and their goals, they’re more willing to listen to us. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
Changing your mind doesn’t make you a flip-flopper or a hypocrite. It means you were open to learning. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
When we pursue happiness, we often start by changing our surroundings. We expect to find bliss in a warmer climate or a friendlier dorm, but any joy that those choices bring about is typically temporary. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
When we’re searching for happiness, we get too busy evaluating life to actually experience it. Instead of savoring our moments of joy, we ruminate about why our lives aren’t more joyful. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Psychologists find that passions are often developed, not discovered. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
Many of our beliefs are cultural truisms: widely shared, but rarely questioned. If we take a closer look at them, we often discover that they rest on shaky foundations. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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. ~ Adam Grant (Think Again).
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 Grant (Think Again).
So these were the 70 top quotes from Think Again book by Adam Grant.
