There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.
My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
Activism that challenges the status quo, that attacks deeply rooted problems, is not for the faint of heart.
We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.
Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.
So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it’s OK.
Nobody accomplishes success by themselves.
Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn’t happen.
The sad thing about doping is how much it obscures our appreciation of greatness.
Success is deeply rooted in time and place. You may have the drive to read tons of books on biology. But if there are no books on biology in your library, and the library is never open, your drive is meaningless.
I’m a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends.
Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there’s feedback.
I worry that track is going to enter into an impossibly complicated stage, where our understanding of the complexities of human physiology – and our ability to accentuate and exploit them – is going to make the notion of pure competition impossible.
I’m necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I’m still a parasite.
I don’t really collect books. I tend to lose interest in them the minute I’ve read them, so most of the books I’ve read are left in airplanes and hotel rooms.
What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.
We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
My father read Charles Dickens to us as children, and at the end of virtually every novel he would choke up and start to cry – and my father NEVER cried. It always made me love him all the more.
The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.