Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

The content of most textbooks is perishable, but the tools of self-directedness serve one well over time.

In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.

Humans are producers of their life circumstance not just products of them.

Students judge how well they might do in a chemistry course from knowing how peers, who performed comparably to them in physics, fared in chemistry

People judge their capabilities partly by comparing their performances with those of others

Such self-referent misgivings creates stress and undermine effective use of the competencies people possess by diverting attention from how best to proceed to concern over personal failings and possible mishaps