Penguin Motivational Quotes

The motivations of suicide bombers may seem hard to understand, but they are largely under-educated kids, turbocharged with carefully crafted religious mumbo-jumbo, and driven by brainwashing and a promise of paradise for them and their family.

Penguins are birds endowed with flippers instead of wings - they can’t fly, but they are expert swimmers. Don't get caught up in others’ gifts and forget yours; if you haven't got it, you probably don’t need it.

Guilt is a wonderful motivator.

That Pyrot had stolen the eighty thousand trusses of hay nobody hesitated for a moment to believe. No one doubted because the general ignorance in which everybody was concerning the affair did not allow of doubt, for doubt is a thing that demands motives. People do not doubt without reasons in the same way that people believe without reasons. The thing was not doubted because it was repeated everywhere and, with the public, to repeat is to prove. It was not doubted because people wished to believe Pyrot guilty and one believes what one wishes to believe. Finally, it was not doubted because the faculty of doubt is rare amongst men; very few minds carry in them its germs and these are not developed without cultivation. Doubt is singular, exquisite, philosophic, immoral, transcendent, monstrous, full of malignity, injurious to persons and to property, contrary to the good order of governments, and to the prosperity of empires, fatal to humanity, destructive of the gods, held in horror by heaven and earth. The mass of the Penguins were ignorant of doubt: it believed in Pyrot’s guilt and this conviction immediately became one of its chief national beliefs and an essential truth in its patriotic creed.

RECOMMENDED READING Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015. Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014. Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009. Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007. Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015. Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014. Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009. Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015. Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015. Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

For an extensive and fascinating discussion of the use and pitfalls of rewards, see Edward Deci, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1996); Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead, 2009).