People at CDC [Centers for Disease Control] who cut their teeth on diseases over the last 10 years have started to think of crime as another disease, and using some of these same concepts. It was something that was in the air in that world, but it was time to bust it out and apply it to any number of different social epidemics.
Malcolm GladwellIf you're in business it's both a promise and a warning. It says that sometimes little things can cause some little guy to have an overnight success.
Malcolm GladwellInstead of thinking about talent as something that you acquire, talent should be thought of as something that you develop.
Malcolm GladwellI worry that track is going to enter into an impossibly complicated stage, where our understanding of the complexities of human physiology - and our ability to accentuate and exploit them - is going to make the notion of pure competition impossible.
Malcolm GladwellSometimes [genius] is just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.
Malcolm GladwellSuperstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.
Malcolm Gladwell