The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families.
Malcolm GladwellWhenever we have something that we are good at--something we care about--that experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our first impressions.
Malcolm GladwellI've always been baffled by how much we over-rate the statistically insignificant differences that separate competitors at the top end of the distribution.
Malcolm GladwellTo become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fisher got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what's ten years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.
Malcolm GladwellWhen the students were asked to identify their race on a pretest questionnaire, that simple act was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement. If a white student from a prestigious private high school gets a higher SAT score than a black student from an inner-city school, is it because sheโs truly a better student, or is it because to be white and to attend a prestigious high school is to be constantly primed with the idea of โsmartโ?
Malcolm Gladwell