Most Important Quotes
The Definition of Originality
"The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, after introducing “vuja de” and the Warby Parker founders’ decision to question the default pricing of eyeglasses.
Analysis: Grant reframes originality as a disciplined practice of skepticism and exploration rather than an innate gift. By shifting the focus from rebellion to improvement, he grounds the theme of Challenging the Status Quo in everyday choices, exemplified by The Warby Parker Founders. The diction—“rejecting the default”—uses a tech metaphor to make the concept concrete and accessible. This is memorable because it democratizes originality, inviting readers to recognize and revise the unseen “defaults” shaping their lives.
The Myth of the Risk-Taker
"Entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs had 33 percent lower odds of failure than those who quit."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, citing research by Joseph Raffiee and Jie Feng to challenge the stereotype of the fearless entrepreneur.
Analysis: The statistic’s precision creates rhetorical shock, puncturing the myth that boldness alone breeds success. It anchors the theme of Risk Mitigation and the Myth of the Risk-Taker, showing that originals manage risk like a portfolio—offsetting daring in one domain with stability in another. The irony is deliberate: caution, not recklessness, often fuels breakthrough outcomes. This makes originality feel tractable for cautious readers, broadening who sees themselves as capable of transformative work.
The True Barrier to Originality
"But in reality, the biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation—it’s idea selection."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 2, contrasting the Segway’s hype (a false positive) with Seinfeld’s initial rejection (a false negative).
Analysis: By redirecting attention from “eureka” moments to judgment, Grant highlights The Challenge of Idea Selection as the crucial bottleneck. The balanced clause structure (“not… it’s…”) sharpens the conceptual pivot, making the insight stick. The quote explains why markets back duds and overlook gems: we are poor forecasters, particularly about novelty. It sets up the book’s practical emphasis on peer vetting and iterative testing to compensate for individual blind spots.
Originality as a Choice
"Originality is not a fixed trait. It is a free choice."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, following a discussion of Abraham Lincoln’s decision to sign the Emancipation Proclamation despite his people-pleasing tendencies.
Analysis: Grant removes originality from the realm of temperament and places it firmly in moral agency. The short, parallel sentences produce aphoristic force, underscoring that courage is often situational, not dispositional. By framing originality as a decision made under pressure, he aligns the book’s tactics with values-based action and the broader project of challenging the status quo. The line is galvanizing because it turns inspiration into a call to practice.
Thematic Quotes
Challenging the Status Quo
The Unreasonable Man
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Speaker: George Bernard Shaw (quoted by Narrator) | Context: Epigraph to Chapter 1, establishing the book’s lens on non-conformists.
Analysis: Shaw’s aphorism crystallizes the book’s central tension between accommodation and transformation. By defining progress as the product of principled stubbornness, it provides a philosophical north star for Grant’s case studies. The antithesis (“adapts himself” vs. “adapt the world”) is a clean rhetorical device that dramatizes the stakes of originality. It primes readers to see contrarianism not as contrariness, but as the engine of societal change.
The World of Defaults
"We live in an Internet Explorer world. Just as almost two thirds of the customer service reps used the default browser on their computers, many of us accept the defaults in our own lives."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, after describing a study linking non-default browser use to higher performance and retention.
Analysis: The browser metaphor translates an abstract cognitive habit—default acceptance—into an everyday decision most readers recognize. By equating software defaults with life scripts, Grant exposes how passive compliance undermines initiative. The imagery is lightly satirical (“an Internet Explorer world”), using cultural currency to make conformity feel both common and costly. It frames originality as a practice of opting out of presets, even in small, mundane choices.
Risk Mitigation and the Myth of the Risk-Taker
The Calculated Original
"The most successful originals are not the daredevils who leap before they look. They are the ones who reluctantly tiptoe to the edge of a cliff, calculate the rate of descent, triple-check their parachutes, and set up a safety net at the bottom just in case."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, concluding an argument with examples like Bill Gates and the founders of Warby Parker.
Analysis: Vivid, kinetic imagery replaces the entrepreneur-as-daredevil cliché with the engineer of contingencies. The contrast between “leap” and “tiptoe,” and the rhythmic list of precautions, dramatizes the mindset of strategic risk. By detailing the choreography of caution, Grant shows how prudence and boldness can coexist within the same venture. This portrait helps readers see that deliberate safeguards enable, rather than diminish, ambitious acts.
The Freedom of Security
"Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, illustrating “risk portfolios” through figures like T.S. Eliot and Pierre Omidyar who maintained stable jobs while innovating.
Analysis: The sentence functions like a theorem for creative behavior under uncertainty: safety buffers license experimentation. It counters the hero myth of burning bridges by arguing that stability can incubate daring ideas. The parallel phrasing (“in one realm… in another”) highlights the cross-domain tradeoff originals exploit. This reframing empowers cautious creators to embrace side projects as legitimate pathways to breakthrough work.
The Challenge of Idea Selection
The Creator’s Blind Spot
"When we’ve developed an idea, we’re typically too close to our own tastes—and too far from the audience’s taste—to evaluate it accurately."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 2, explaining why creators like Segway’s Dean Kamen misjudge market fit.
Analysis: The line diagnoses a structural empathy gap between makers and their markets, intensified by overconfidence and confirmation bias. The hyphenated contrast embodies the distance it describes: personal taste versus public appetite. It justifies external vetting—especially by informed peers—as a corrective to creator myopia. This insight explains both the allure of pet projects and the necessity of disciplined feedback loops.
Quantity as a Path to Quality
"If you want to be original, 'the most important possible thing you could do,' says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, 'is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.'"
Speaker: Ira Glass (quoted by Narrator) | Context: Chapter 2, supporting Dean Simonton’s research that high output increases the odds of producing a masterpiece.
Analysis: Glass’s advice recasts creative excellence as a probabilistic game, where volume is the lever for variance. The repetition and imperative mood give the counsel momentum, nudging readers toward practice over perfectionism. It complements the idea-selection theme by acknowledging that even experts cannot reliably forecast their best work in advance. The takeaway is pragmatic: make more to discover the few that truly matter.
Character-Defining Quotes
Adam Grant
"It was the worst financial decision I’ve ever made, and I needed to understand where I went wrong."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, reflecting on declining an early chance to invest in Warby Parker.
Analysis: Grant foregrounds intellectual humility, presenting himself not as a guru but as a researcher animated by error. The candid admission creates ethos, positioning the book as an inquiry born of curiosity rather than hindsight bravado. The shift from confession to investigation (“I needed to understand”) models the learning mindset he recommends. It also foreshadows the book’s emphasis on risk calibration and better forecasting.
The Warby Parker Founders
"'We want to hedge our bets,' he responded. 'We’re not sure if it’s a good idea and we have no clue whether it will succeed, so we’ve been working on it in our spare time during the school year.'"
Speaker: Neil Blumenthal | Context: Chapter 1, answering Grant’s question about why the founders stayed in school and took internships instead of going all-in.
Analysis: Blumenthal’s language—“hedge,” “spare time”—captures the founders’ disciplined caution in the face of uncertainty. Their skepticism about their own idea counters the myth of visionary certainty and exemplifies risk portfolio thinking. The quote functions as a character sketch of pragmatic originals who build runways before takeoff. It becomes a case-study refrain for the book’s argument that careful pacing often precedes outsized impact.
Steve Jobs
"Steve Jobs called it the most amazing piece of technology since the personal computer."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 2, opening a discussion of the Segway hype cycle and the perils of misforecasting.
Analysis: Invoking Jobs—a symbol of prescient genius—heightens the irony that even icons misread innovation outside their core domain. The superlative phrasing dramatizes the gap between excitement and adoption, reinforcing the fragility of intuition in idea selection. By decentering hero-worship, Grant advances the theme of The Challenge of Idea Selection and the need for structured testing. The line is memorable because it punctures the illusion that individual brilliance guarantees market truth.
Memorable Lines
The Limits of Practice
"Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 1, explaining why prodigies often master rules without breaking them.
Analysis: The aphorism flips a cliché to separate mastery from originality with elegant concision. Its antithetical structure (“perfect” versus “new”) crystallizes the difference between skill accumulation and creative leap. Grant’s tweak invites readers to balance deliberate practice with deliberate divergence. It becomes a litmus test for whether effort is honing craft or merely deepening conformity.
The Art of Selection
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
Speaker: Scott Adams (quoted by Narrator) | Context: Epigraph to Chapter 2, introducing the craft of evaluating ideas.
Analysis: The parallel sentences split the creative process into generative and curatorial phases, both necessary and distinct. By dignifying mistakes as raw material, the quote normalizes volume and failure on the path to originality. It also underscores that discernment—choosing what survives—is the rarer, harder art central to The Challenge of Idea Selection. The pithy balance of permission and discipline makes it an enduring heuristic for creators.
Opening and Closing Lines
Opening Line of the Foreword
"Adam Grant is the perfect person to write Originals because he is one."
Speaker: Sheryl Sandberg | Context: Foreword, first sentence endorsing the author’s credibility and example.
Analysis: Sandberg fuses author and argument, casting Grant as both analyst and exemplar. The circular compliment serves as a social proof that primes trust before the research begins. It also frames the book as lived expertise, not just academic synthesis, enhancing reader buy-in. As an opening gambit, it signals that authority here is both empirical and embodied.
Closing Line of Chapter 2
"When we judge their greatness, we focus not on their averages, but on their peaks."
Speaker: Narrator (Adam Grant) | Context: Chapter 2’s conclusion, after noting that prolific creators produce many misses alongside hits.
Analysis: The line reframes evaluation away from batting average toward slugging percentage, aligning recognition with singular breakthroughs. Its contrastive structure (“not… but…”) delivers a clean cognitive reset for how to view creative careers. By normalizing uneven outputs, it encourages risk-taking and resilience, crucial for sustained originality. It leaves readers with a permission slip: strive for peaks, accept the valleys that come with them.