Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - "The Sports Gene" - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an "all-star challenge" on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decathlon.

Outlier are those who have been given opportunities-- -and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone.

To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.

Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

The Rule of 150 says that congregants of a rapidly expanding church, or the members of a social club, or anyone in a group activity banking on the epidemic spread of shared ideals needs to be particularly cognizant of the perils of the bigness. Crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a big difference.

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.

It's not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.

Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.

The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.

We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.

Emotion is contagious.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.

One of the things I think the police have to do is to stop behaving like armies.

It's just strange to think that so much of our enjoyment from sports comes from the elevation of arbitrary differences.

I don't go to an office, so I write at home. I like to write in the morning, if possible; that's when my mind is freshest. I might write for a couple of hours, and then I head out to have lunch and read the paper. Then I write for a little bit longer if I can, then probably go to the library or make some phone calls. Every day is a little bit different. I'm not highly routinized, so I spend a lot of time wandering around New York City with my laptop in my bag, wondering where I'm going to end up next. It's a fairly idyllic life for someone who likes writing.

If your parents are billionaires, that might actually be an obstacle to your own happiness and self-development. If you go to Oxford or Harvard, that might actually thwart your desire to graduate with a science or math degree.

Innovation-the heart of the knowledge economy-is fundamentally social.

Sometimes the most modest changes can bring about enormous effects.

You can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.

I'm totally engaging in cultural stereotyping, no question about it. But I think it's OK because I'm doing it for a reason, for a good reason.

Jenny Simpson loses her shoe in the women's fifteen hundred, with a lap and a half to go, destroying her chances to repeat as world champion, and she gives the most gracious interview afterward about how she's had a wonderful career already. Great for Jenny Simpson. Bad for the sport! We need drama!

It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you'll be.

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.

You don't want to be first, right? You want to be second or third. You don't want to be - Facebook is not the first in social media. They're the third, right? Similarly, you know, if you look at Steve Jobs' history, he's never been first.

The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up.

We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.

When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.

Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time.

Shortly after the birth control pill was approved for public distribution, one woman wrote to John Rock, its inventor, "You should be afraid to meet your maker." Rock, despite being Catholic replied, "My dear Madam, in my faith, we are taught that the Lord is with us always. When my time comes, there will be no need for introductions."

What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because, that's the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.

Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key area. The Law of the Few says that Connectors, Mavens, and Salesman are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic , your resources ought to be solely concentrated on these three groups. No one else matters.

if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.

What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.

Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.

The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.

Those with health insurance are overinsured and their behavior is distorted by moral hazard. Those without health insurance use their own money to make decisions based on an assessment of their needs. The insured are wasteful. The uninsured are prudent. So what's the solution? Make the insured a little more like the uninsured.

Working really hard is what successful people do.

Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly ten years, if you think about four hours a day.

What do we tell our children? Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation.

The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families.

Success is deeply rooted in time and place. You may have the drive to read tons of books on biology. But if there are no books on biology in your library, and the library is never open, your drive is meaningless.

You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.

That was it! The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.

Anyone who knows the marketing world knows that ideas come and go, and people latch onto things and think of them as a kind of solution.