In order to get one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, in other words, we thought we needed the solitary genius. But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell.
Malcolm GladwellWhat is learned out of hard work and trial is inevitably more powerful than what is learned easily.
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