"Fixate on whole cultures, not specific pieces of poverty. No specific intervention is going to turn around the life of a child or an adult in any consistent way, but if you can surround a person with ..."
- David Brooks
"(A middle-class child's) parents didn't just give him money. They passed down habits, knowledge, and cognitive traits."
"Dan P. McAdams argues that children develop a narrative tone which influences their stories for the rest of their lives. Children gradually adopt an enduring assumption that everything will turn out w..."
"People with character are capable of long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are..."
"To nurture your career, it makes sense to cultivate your strengths. To nurture your moral core, it is necessary to confront your weaknesses."
"You can’t build rich lives simply by reading sermons or following abstract rules. Example is the best teacher. Moral improvement occurs most reliably when the heart is warmed,"
"there was perhaps a strain of humility that was more common then than now, that there was a moral ecology, stretching back centuries but less prominent now, encouraging people to be more skeptical of ..."
"The inner struggle against one’s own weaknesses is the central drama of life."
"I make honorable things pleasant to children." A teacher from Sparta"
"Angela Duckworth has shown how important grit and perseverance are to lifetime outcomes. College students who report that they finish whatever they begin have higher grades than their peers, even ones..."