The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.

If there is one thing I learned by reading Epstein's "The Sports Gene" it is that world-class athletes are, by definition, abnormal: that is, the kind of person capable of competing at that level is necessarily very different from the rest of us physiologically. They are outliers.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

Why are man hole covers around?" If you don't knwo the answer to the questions, you're not smart enough to work at microsoft

The issue isn't the accuracy of the bombs you have, it's how you use the bombs you have - and more importantly, whether you ought to use bombs at all.

What track needs to figure out: how to engage us between the races. Instead, the entire off-the-track conversation is about doping. This is how you kill a sport.

In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.