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.

When people are not aiming for anything in particular or when they cannot monitor their performance, there is little basis for translating perceived efficacy into appropriate magnitudes of effort

Gaining insight into one's underlying motives, it seems, is more like a belief conversion than a self-discovery process

If there is any characteristic that is distinctly human, it is the capability for reflective self-consciousness.

Psychology cannot tell people how they ought to live their lives. It can however, provide them with the means for effecting personal and social change.

Discrepancies between self-efficacy judgment and performance will arise when either the tasks or the circumstances under which they are performed are ambiguous

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