...If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)
Malcolm GladwellI'm convinced that ideas and behaviors and new products move through a population very much like a disease does.
Malcolm GladwellWhen it's easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent.
Malcolm GladwellThe trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story.
Malcolm GladwellMy point is that the great challenge of an artist is to balance those two things: to be strong enough to have your own personal vision that you will put on the page or the canvas or the screen, no matter what people say, but it requires a radical sensitivity. You have to be completely open to what the world is telling you, to what your audience tells you. And balancing those two things is nearly impossible.
Malcolm GladwellAchievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.
Malcolm GladwellSuccess is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard.
Malcolm GladwellSix degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.
Malcolm GladwellEconomists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the โworkโ will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.
Malcolm GladwellWhat we do as a community, as a society, for each other, matters as much as what we do for ourselves. It sounds a little trite, but there's a powerful amount of truth in that, I think.
Malcolm GladwellI should point out that I have a picture of Asbel Kiprop as the screensaver on my phone. Is that embarrassing?
Malcolm GladwellThere is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we've been. That brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in academia and never sees the light of day.
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 GladwellBasketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is the critical lesson of improve, too, and it is also a key to understanding a puzzle of Millennium Challenge: spontaneity isn't random.
Malcolm GladwellOur intuitions, as humans, aren't always very good. Changes that happen really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing.
Malcolm GladwellI write my books to challenge my own feelings and theories. Perhaps most surprising was what I learned about rice farming. It was really interesting to think of how different Asian and Western cultures are as a result of the kinds of agricultural practices that our ancestors used for thousands of years. The life of a Chinese peasant in the Middle Ages was so dramatically different from the life of a European peasant - night and day different.
Malcolm GladwellIn fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.
Malcolm GladwellScience fiction annoyed me because it was like, "Why is the world as it is not enough for you?"
Malcolm GladwellSo long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it's OK.
Malcolm GladwellThere is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.
Malcolm GladwellWhen people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters-first and foremost-how they behave.
Malcolm GladwellIt is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.
Malcolm GladwellSometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer.
Malcolm GladwellIt is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. Itโs the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. Itโs the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And itโs the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call โaccumulative advantage.
Malcolm GladwellPeople are in one of two states in a relationship,โ Gottman went on. โThe first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. Itโs like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and theyโll say, โOh, heโs just in a crummy mood.โ Or they can be in negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative.
Malcolm GladwellThere is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.
Malcolm GladwellThe people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
Malcolm GladwellA fan is always an outsider. Most sportswriters are not, by this definition, fans. They capitalize on access to athletes. They spoke to Kobe last night, and Kobe says his finger is going to be fine. They spent three days fly-fishing with Brett Favre in March, and Brett says he's definitely coming back for another season.
Malcolm GladwellPeople who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.
Malcolm GladwellThe difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.
Malcolm GladwellA radical and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge convention.
Malcolm GladwellCultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.
Malcolm GladwellRe-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.
Malcolm GladwellThere's no idea that can't be explained to a thoughtful 14-year-old. If the thoughtful 14-year-old doesn't get it, it is your fault, not the 14-year-old's.
Malcolm GladwellThe 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.
Malcolm GladwellAs a writer, I know that - you write a first draft and then put it in a drawer. The longer I can put it in a drawer, the better off I am. So I structure my writing so that things can sit.
Malcolm GladwellI'm someone who can provide an intellectual framework, but I can't tell people who are trying to sell Product X how to do that because I don't know, and I would be faking it if I attempted to step into that role.
Malcolm GladwellWe tend to credit those who create an idea, not those who perfect it, forgetting that it is often only in the perfection of an idea that true progress occurs. Putting sixty-four transistors on a chip allowed people to dream of the future. Putting four million transistors on a chip actually gave them the future.
Malcolm Gladwell