“Between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows: long and steep is the path that leads to her, and it is rough at the first.”
Hesiod, c. 700 BC · Greek farmer poet, writing to his brother Perses
Chapter 5
On Failure
“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”
Frederick Douglass, 1857 · American abolitionist, born into slavery, speaking at Canandaigua, New York
“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”
Booker T. Washington, 1901 · American educator, born into slavery, founder of Tuskegee
“I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.”
Marie Curie, 1923 · Polish French physicist and chemist, recalling her first laboratory failures
“Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hope will die fasting. There are no gains without pains.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1758 · American printer, writing as Poor Richard
“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that.”
Ecclesiastes, 1611 · Hebrew wisdom literature, King James Version
“Good luck enters by dint of cuffs.”
Spanish proverb, 1859 · collected in a nineteenth century comparison of proverbs across nations
“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841 · American essayist
Across cadets, spellers and students, researchers found that sustained effort toward a long goal predicted success beyond talent or measured intelligence. They named the trait grit.
Angela Duckworth and colleagues, 2007 · psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania, six samples including West Point cadets
Asked about their worst jobs, people at the end of long careers refused to call them wasted. Learn from the bad stuff, they said. No matter what the experience is, learn.
Cornell Legacy Project cohort, 2011 · more than 1,500 Americans in their seventies and beyond, interviewed on work and career
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