Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

99 Sourced Quotes

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.

Malcolm Gladwell
We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

Malcolm Gladwell
Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

Malcolm Gladwell
To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success — the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history — with a society that provides opportunities for all.

Malcolm Gladwell
We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

Malcolm Gladwell
Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

Malcolm Gladwell
We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility.

Malcolm Gladwell
A radical and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge convention.

Malcolm Gladwell
What do we tell our children? Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation.

Malcolm Gladwell
The answer is that the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.

Malcolm Gladwell
The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up.

Malcolm Gladwell
Cultural 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 Gladwell
Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way...We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that — sometimes — we're better off that way.

Malcolm Gladwell
Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer... But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable... They are people willing to take social risks-to do things that others might disapprove of.

Malcolm Gladwell
Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key area. The Law of the Few says that Connectors, Mavens, and Salesman are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic, your resources ought to be solely concentrated on these three groups. No one else matters.

Malcolm Gladwell
Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.

Malcolm Gladwell
What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because, that's the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.

Malcolm Gladwell
The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

Malcolm Gladwell
An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.

Malcolm Gladwell
If we think about emotion this way - as outside-in, not inside out - it is possible to understand how some people can have an enormous amount of influence over others. Some of us, after all, are very good at expressiing emotions and feelings, which means that we are far more emotionally contagious than the rest of us.

Malcolm Gladwell
It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.

Malcolm Gladwell
The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story.

Malcolm Gladwell
We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.

Malcolm Gladwell
The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our place in history presents us with.

Malcolm Gladwell
Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.

Malcolm Gladwell
A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

Malcolm Gladwell
Being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience

Malcolm Gladwell
That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

Malcolm Gladwell
In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

Malcolm Gladwell
If we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition

Malcolm Gladwell