Po Bronson > Quotes

“We've all lost something along the way.”
― Po Bronson, "Why Do I Love These People?": Understanding, Surviving, and Creating Your Own Family

“If you want to give yourself a fair chance to succeed, never expect too much too soon”
― Po Bronson

“Failure is hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.”
― Po Bronson

“But I'd rather help than watch. I'd rather have a heart than a mind. I'd rather expose too much than too little. I'd rather say hello to strangers than be afraid of them. I would rather know all this about myself than have more money than I need. I'd rather have something to love than a way to impress you.”
― Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

“Books have been my classroom and my confidant. Books have widened my horizons. Books have comforted me in my hardest times. Books have changed my life.”
― Po Bronson

“Interests evolve into hobbies or volunteer work, which grow into passions. It takes time, more time than anyone imagines.”
― Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

“I learned that it was in hard times that people usually changed the course of their life; in good times, they frequently only talked about change. Hard times forced them to overcome the doubts that normally gave them pause.It surprised me how often we hold ourselves back until we have no choice.”
― Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

“I used to use business to make money. But I've learned that business is a tool. You can use it to support what you believe in.”
― Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

“I used to want to change the world. Now I'm open to letting it change me.”
― Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

“A Piece of writing has to seduce the reader, it has to suspend disbelief and earn the reader's trust”
― Po Bronson

“‎It's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. Most people make mistakes. Most people have to learn the hardest lessons more than once.”
― Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

“The more controlling the parent,” Caldwell explained, “the more likely a child is to experience boredom.”
― Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“In taking our marital arguments upstairs to avoid exposing the children to strife, we accidentally deprived them of chances to witness how two people who care about each other can work out their differences in a calm and reasoned way.”
― Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“I think when a reader reads a whole book - which takes six to ten hours - that’s kind of a gift to the author. The gift of close, undivided attention. To who else do we listen so closely for eight straight hours? And when readers give that gift to me, I’m grateful for it.”
― Po Bronson

“educational television had a dramatic effect on relational aggression. The more the kids watched, the crueler they’d be to their classmates. This correlation was 2.5 times higher than the correlation between violent media and physical aggression.”
― Po Bronson, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.”
― Po Bronson

“When we changed the channel from violent television to tamer fare, kids just ended up learning the advanced skills of clique formation, friendship withdrawal, and the art of the insult.”
― Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“Researchers have found that the more people focus on their odds of winning, the less likely they’ll go for it. But the more they focus on what they’ll win if they succeed, the more likely they’ll go for it.”
― Po Bronson, Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing

“Might our culture-wide perception of what it means to be a teenager be unwittingly skewed by the fact they don’t get enough sleep?”
― Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“Failure's hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.”
― Po Bronson

“Darling found that permissive parents don’t actually learn more about their child’s lives. “Kids who go wild and get in trouble mostly have parents who don’t set rules or standards. Their parents are loving and accepting no matter what the kids do. But the kids take the lack of rules as a sign their parents don’t actually care—that their parent doesn’t really want this job of being the parent.”
― Po Bronson, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“Children key off their parents’ reaction more than the argument or physical discipline itself.”
― Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“Parents often fail to address early childhood lying, since the lying is almost innocent—their child’s too young to know what lies are, or that lying’s wrong. When their child gets older and learns those distinctions, the parents believe, the lying will stop. This is dead wrong, according to Dr. Talwar.”
― Po Bronson, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“siblings between the ages of three and seven clash 3.5 times per hour, on average. Some of those are brief clashes, others longer, but it adds up to ten minutes of every hour spent arguing.”
― Po Bronson, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“And the rule still holds true: more diversity translates into more division between students.”
― Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“(Even for adults, seeing someone’s lips as he speaks is the equivalent of a 20-decibel increase in volume.)”
― Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“In one study, Cummings found that children’s emotional well-being and security are more affected by the relationship between the parents than by the direct relationship between the parent and child.”
― Po Bronson, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

“It bears repeating: the mental states needed to compete are not always socially palatable.”
― Po Bronson, Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing

“How often a mother initiated a conversation with her child was not predictive of the language outcomes—what mattered was, if the infant initiated, whether the mom responded.”
― Po Bronson

“We are all writing the story of our life. We want to know what it’s “about,” what are its themes and which theme is on the rise. We demand of it something deeper, or richer, or more substantive. We want to know where we’re headed __not to spoil our own ending by ruining the surprise, but we want to ensure that when the ending comes, it won’t be shallow. We will not have done something. We will not have squandered our time here.”
― Po Bronson