Believing that you can change someone’s future or have some kind of influence on their path in life requires teachers to have a growth mindset — a phrase coined by Dr. Carol Dweck in her bestselling book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Having a growth mindset allows you to believe that you can improve and change with practice and determination. With a growth mindset, you view challenges with excitement and look forward to the opportunity to overcome them because you know you will get something out of the process and learn from your mistakes. Those with a fixed mindset, who believe their traits, talents, and abilities are permanent and cannot be improved, are less likely to enjoy as much success in school, work, and life in general. When teachers foster a growth mindset in the classroom, it helps students understand their full potential. Teachers with a growth mindset teach their students that intelligence is moldable and expandable, which keeps students inspired to learn, even if they are facing failure.
The Benefits of a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset for kids is beneficial because it helps them grow and improve their skills and become better at whatever they are doing. They don’t accept initial roadblocks as permanent limitations. In fact, children who are taught to have a growth mindset are encouraged to view their failures as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than just the end of the road. A growth mindset boosts resilience in students, increases their confidence and self-esteem, and makes it easier to bounce back from the disappointment of defeat. Here are 50 of the best growth mindset quotes for kids and teachers to help encourage a positive learning environment in the classroom. If you are a teacher, consider putting some of these quotes on the walls of your classroom for your students to read each day as a reminder that they should never give up on their goals.
50 of the Best Growth Mindset Quotes For The Classroom
Select 1 of these 50 growth mindset quotes to share this week:
- “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.” – Little Women
- “The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.” – Jack Sparrow
- “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
- “Always do what you are afraid of doing.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” – Frank A. Clark
- “All things are difficult before they are easy.” Thomas Fuller
- “Just because you haven’t found your talent yet doesn’t mean you don’t have one.” – Kermit the Frog
- “Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good.” – Alan Weiss
- “You have not failed unless you have quit trying.” – Gordon B. Hinckley
- “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” – Nelson Mandela
- “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” – Winston Churchill
- “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles Swindoll
- “Be so busy improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.” – Chetan Bhagat
- “Believe you can and you are half way there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think!” – Albert Einstein
- “I am always doing what I cannot do yet. In order to learn how to do it.” – Vincent Van Gogh
- “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity!” – Albert Einstein
- “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.” – Thomas Watson
- “Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine
- “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” – Henry Ford
- “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson 22. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake.” – Elbert Hubbard
- “You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end.” – Sidney A. Friedman 24. “If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.” – Confucius
- “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
- “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the ones you did.” – Mark Twain
- “The problem human beings face is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed.” – Michelangelo
- “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
- “We find comfort among those who agree with us, and growth among those who don’t.” – Frank A. Clark
- “Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must also step up the stairs.” – Vaclac Havel
- “The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.” – Wallace Wattles
- “Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” – J. W. Goethe
- “Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.” – Samuel Johnson
- “History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.” – B.C. Forbes
- “Don’t worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Sherman Finesilver
- “Unless you’re willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen.” – Phillip Adams
- “The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success.” – H.W. Arnold
- “What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.” – Unknown
- “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.” – Albert Ellis
- “Knowing what is and knowing what can be are not the same thing.” – Ellen Langer
- “There is always a step small enough from where we are to get us to where we want to be. If we take that small step, there’s always another we can take, and eventually a goal thought to be too far to reach becomes achievable.” – Ellen Langer
- “I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. . .I divide the world into the learners and the non-learners.” – Benjamin Barber
- “Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you where a student could end up.” – Carol Dweck
- “You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By becoming a little better each and every day, over a period of time, you will become a lot better.” – John Wooden
- “If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.” – Marva Collins
- “At God’s footstool to confess,A poor soul knelt and bowed his head.‘I failed,’ he cried. The Master said,‘Thou didst thy best, that is success.’” – quoted by John Wooden
- “There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.” – Albert Ellis
- “Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility.” – Ellen Langer
- “If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning.” – Carol Dweck Download (PDF) 50 Growth Mindset Quotes For Kids 101 Deep Quotes That Are Meaningful 36 Quotes To Remind You Never To Hurt Your Mother 99 Of The Best Short Quotes Of All Time
How to Use These Growth Mindset Quotes
There are many ways to inspire your students with these quotes beyond posting them on the classroom wall. We’ve come up with a few ideas to consider.
Use them for classroom discussion. Pick a quote that you know your students will understand. Ask students what the quote means to them and how they can apply the concept to their own lives.
Create a writing assignment. Choose a quote as the topic for a writing or journaling assignment to invite them to expand their ideas and thoughts about a growth mindset.
Ask students to write their own mindset quotes. These quotes can be related to a growth or fixed mindset. Then ask each student to read their quote and invite other students to make comments.
Use a quote as a morning affirmation. Find a pithy and motivating quote that you and your students can say aloud at the start of the school day. It can create a positive and uplifting environment as you begin teaching.
Final thoughts
Did you find these growth mindset sayings helpful? When you share growth mindset quotes with your students, you are reinforcing the way you want them to view their skills and abilities. As students hear these growth mindset quotes on a daily basis, they will start to think along the lines of, “I can’t do this quite yet, but I’ll get there” instead of simply thinking, “I can’t do this.” Once you start encouraging your students to try new things and then praise them for their progress and effort rather than the final outcome that they produce, your students will learn that effort is as valuable and rewarding as the outcome. Students will be able to enjoy the process of their work and focus on the small steps that they take rather than only looking at what the final result will be. If you enjoyed these mindset quotes, take a moment to spread the love by sharing them on your preferred social media platform so that other teachers, parents, and students can benefit from them.
