Malcolm Gladwell

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It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Smart
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Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Numbers
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For every romantic possiblity, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word capable of extinguishing it.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Love
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You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Social
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Lands' End has undergone three major changes over the past couple of decades. The first was the introduction of an 800 number, in 1978; the second was express delivery, in 1994; and the third was the introduction of a Web site, in 1995. The first two innovations cut the average transaction time-the time between the moment of ordering and the moment the goods are received-from three weeks to four days. The third innovation has cut the transaction time from four days to, well, four days.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Couple
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The first person who throws the rock is a lot more radical than a hundredth person.By the time the riot has attracted a hundred people, you don't have to be nearly as much of a daredevil or a hothead or committed or any of those things to want to engage in a riot.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Rocks
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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
Collection: Kings
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Whenever 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 Gladwell
Collection: Passion
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Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Ideas
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Radio stations have constructed a narrow door[way], and that's because they don't understand how complex and paradoxical our snap judgments are. It's hard to measure new songs.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Song
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There are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Stress
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People are experience-rich and theory-poor. I help people organize / make sense of their experiences.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: People
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Shortly after the birth control pill was approved for public distribution, one woman wrote to John Rock, its inventor, "You should be afraid to meet your maker." Rock, despite being Catholic replied, "My dear Madam, in my faith, we are taught that the Lord is with us always. When my time comes, there will be no need for introductions."
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Rocks
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We 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
Collection: Dream
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our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can't look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret - and decode - what lies behind our snap judgment and first impressions.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Lying
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being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Long
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I would say first of all, anyone who wants to challenge the status quo always gets that response. Ninety percent of the time, that's just bull. That's just the way in which people choose to prop up their own privilege or their own particular position. So mostly I shrug it off.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: People
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Do I think that American democracy ends if Trump is president? No! I think, there are plenty of checks and balances in place. I think he would do some damage to the country but we would recover. The office of the presidency and American democratic institutions are a lot stronger than one person. So if he wins, our job is just to keep the office strong, right? And hope he'll be replaced by something better!
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Country
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You may hate Hillary Clinton and you may have good reason for hating Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton is one person who even if she's elected will be gone one day and you still have the task of keeping American democracy going.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Hate
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Trump is an innovator who has shown how out of step the political establishment was. Which I think, probably, in the long term will be healthy. We have to figure out how to reinvigorate our political institutions and he's demonstrating to us the urgency of that task.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Thinking
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Every cop will tell you that their real job is being a social worker. That's what they do all day. The large majority of police officers in this country never even draw their gun, let alone fire it. They do conflict resolution, right? And if that's their job, why do they need to look like they're an occupying force?
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Country
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So the first task of a police force is not to fight crime and enforce the law. It is to establish legitimacy with the law-abiding citizenry and then fight crime and enforce the law.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Fighting
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And my advice for college graduates is don't reflexively give money to your alma mater, something particular to Americans that I find extraordinary. Take Princeton, for example - it has more money on a per capita basis than any educational institution in the history of educational institutions. There is no scenario where it can spend all the money its endowment generates every year. If there is anyone who gives a single dollar to Princeton, they have completely lost their mind. I will say that without reservation.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Educational
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There are lots of issues more important than where billionaires donate their money.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Important
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The religious paradigm and the science fiction paradigm are different. Apologies to science fiction fans, but the paradigm there is to create a new world and describe it with a kind of specificity that we describe the world we inhabit. Religiosity, on the other hand, does none of that.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Religious
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Science fiction annoyed me because it was like, "Why is the world as it is not enough for you?"
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Annoyed
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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
Collection: Mean
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We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Teacher
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The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Business
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You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: People
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If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: People
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Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Tough Times
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[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Thinking
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What is learned out of hard work and trial is inevitably more powerful than what is learned easily.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Powerful
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Achievement is talent plus preparation
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Success
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Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Success
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The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Beauty
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When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Trying
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The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: People
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No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Success
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Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Annoying
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When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters-first and foremost-how they behave.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: People
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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
Collection: Giving Up
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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
Collection: Creativity
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Through embracing the diversity of humans beings, we will find a sure way to true happiness.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Diversity
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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
Collection: Historical
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The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Smart
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Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Powerful
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If you look at the careers of great entrepreneurs and you look at the moment they took their plunge, the plunge is rarely a great financial or material risk, it’s a social risk. At the moment they started their new businesses, everyone around them said ‘you’re an idiot’.
- Malcolm Gladwell
Collection: Careers