Knowledge is power
In 1826 a Baltimore slaveholder banned an 8-year-old Frederick Douglass from learning to read. Douglass learned anyway, and his story…
learning
My entire life can be summed up
Darynda Jones spent 9 years chasing a publishing deal and still sums up her life in one shrug of a…
We were both wrong
Dr. House admits he got a diagnosis wrong, then ranks his patient’s mistake as at least 6 times bigger than…
It’s not the failure that’s desirable
Peter C. Brown’s quote from Make It Stick explains why challenging practice and occasional failure strengthen learning.
Teachers open the door
In a prison cell, Malcolm X copied a dictionary by hand to teach himself the words he lacked. This Chinese…
Education is not about getting knowledge
Nobody can hand you an education. Maria Popova says you have to claim it, and here’s what that looks like…
Deep practice is not measured
Daniel Coyle argues that effective practice isn’t measured by the amount of time you spend, but by how deliberately you…
Study hard what interests you
In the late 1940s, Richard Feynman was so burned out on physics that he decided to only study it for…
All life is an experiment
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “All life is an experiment” encourages action over overplanning. Trying more things, accepting failure, and tracking attempts…
I have no special talents
Einstein’s line about having no special talent, just curiosity, is really about a habit anyone can build. He went from…