Malcolm Gladwell - Success Quotes

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Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.

Malcolm Gladwell
Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by we I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

Malcolm Gladwell
Success is not a function of individual talent. It's the steady accumulation of advantages. It's bound up in so many other broader circumstantial, environmental, historical, and cultural factors.

Malcolm Gladwell
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.

Malcolm Gladwell
Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer.

Malcolm Gladwell
Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

Malcolm Gladwell
Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there's feedback.

Malcolm Gladwell
It 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. It's the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It's the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it's the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call accumulative advantage.

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
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
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
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