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.

If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can't need social approval to go forward. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing?

We vary greatly in the natural advantages that we've been given. The world's not fair

Flom had the same experience...He didn't triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.

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

The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances.

If you play an audiotape of a yawn to blind people, they'll yawn too.