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.

The people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.

The goal of storytelling should be to make stories as ubiquitous as music.

I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.

I've always been baffled by how much we over-rate the statistically insignificant differences that separate competitors at the top end of the distribution.

...If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)