Gladwell Malcolm Quotes & Sayings

In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply. — Malcolm Gladwell

If you plug in the neocortex ratio for Homo sapiens, you get a group estimate of 147.8-or roughly 150. "The figure 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. — Malcolm Gladwell

Father: 'Anything but journalism.' I rebelled. — Malcolm Gladwell

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions ... by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions. — Malcolm Gladwell

Think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all? Answer: the so-called happy countries. It's the same phenomenon as in the Military Police and the Air Corps. If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don't feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face?2 Caroline Sacks's decision to evaluate herself, then, by looking around her organic chemistry classroom was not some strange and irrational behavior. It is what human beings do. We compare ourselves to those in the same situation as ourselves, which means that students in an elite school - except, perhaps, — Malcolm Gladwell

Our 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 Gladwell

The Stickiness Factor says that there are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable; there are relatively simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information that can make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes. — Malcolm Gladwell

University of Hawaii Press, 1983; The Happiest Man: The Life of Louis Borgenicht (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1942). Used by permission of Lindy Friedman Sobel and Alice Friedman Holzman. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. ISBN 978-0-316-04034-1 E3 — Malcolm Gladwell

Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues ... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time. — Malcolm Gladwell

[Norden] said, with the Mark 15 Norden bombsight, he could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel at 20,000 feet. — Malcolm Gladwell

The Law of the Few, ... says that one critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger. — 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

Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation — Malcolm Gladwell

My highest compliment is when someone comes up to me to say, "My 14-year-old daughter, or my 12-year-old son read your book and loved it." I cannot conceive of a greater compliment than that - to write something that as an adult I find satisfying, but also that manages to reach a curious 13- or 14-year-old. — Malcolm Gladwell

Contagiousness is an unexpected property of all kinds of things. — Malcolm Gladwell

Many people with dyslexia truly suffer, and their lives are worse off for having had that disability. — Malcolm Gladwell

Successful people don't do it alone. Where they come from matters. They're products of particular places and environments. — Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker writer, has suggested that as a society we value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort. We endow our heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. — Carol S. Dweck

If you're last in your class at Harvard, it doesn't feel like you're a good student, even though you really are. It's not smart for everyone to want to go to a great school. — Malcolm Gladwell

It is not possible to staff a large company without short people. There simply aren't enough tall people to go around. — Malcolm Gladwell

Over the past decade, the anti-smoking movement has railed against the tobacco companies for making smoking cool and has spent untold millions of dollars of public money trying to convince teenagers that smoking isn't cool. But that's not the point. Smoking was never cool. Smokers are cool. Smoking epidemics begin in precisely the same way that the suicide epidemic in Micronesia began or word-of-mouth epidemics begin or the AIDS epidemic began, because of the extraordinary influence of Pam P. and Billy G. and Maggie and their equivalents-the smoking versions of R. and Tom Gau and Gaetan Dugas. In this epidemic, as in all others, a very small group-a select few-are responsible for driving the epidemic forward. — Malcolm Gladwell

paesani of Roseto worked in the marble quarries in the surrounding hills, or cultivated the fields in the terraced valley below, walking four and five miles down — Malcolm Gladwell

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew! — Malcolm Gladwell

They spent their first night in America sleeping on the floor of a tavern on Mulberry Street, in Manhattan's Little Italy. Then they ventured west, eventually finding jobs in a slate quarry ninety miles west of the city near the town of Bangor, Pennsylvania. The following year, fifteen Rosetans left Italy — Malcolm Gladwell

Gosh darn it," Gau said, "if you don't try, you'll never succeed." 10. — Malcolm Gladwell

I should point out that I have a picture of Asbel Kiprop as the screensaver on my phone. Is that embarrassing? — Malcolm Gladwell

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

Landowner of those parts. An archway to one side leads to a church, the Madonna del Carmine - Our Lady of Mount Carmine. Narrow stone steps run up the hillside, flanked by closely clustered two-story stone houses with red-tile roofs. For centuries, the paesani of Roseto — Malcolm Gladwell

I realize that we are often wary of making these kinds of broad generalizations about different cultural groups
and with good reason. This is the form that racial and ethnic stereotypes take. We want to believe that we are not prisoners of our ethnic histories. But the simple truth is that if you want to understand ... you have to go back to the past ... it matters where you're from, not just in terms of where you grew up or where your parents grew up, but in terms of where you great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents grew up and even where your great-great-grandparents grew up. That is a strange and powerful fact. — Malcolm Gladwell

In winter, the lazy man freezes to death. — Malcolm Gladwell

Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone. — Malcolm Gladwell

When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted. — Malcolm Gladwell

The most advanced computer science programs in the world, and over the course of the Computer Center's life, thousands of students passed — Malcolm Gladwell

Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, a four-volume work so dense that its readers were evenly divided between those who understood it and thought it was brilliant and those who did not understand it and thought it was brilliant. — Malcolm Gladwell

A 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 Gladwell

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

A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle. — Malcolm Gladwell

Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects: a brick a blanket This is an example of what's called a divergence test — Malcolm Gladwell

That fundamentally undermines your ability to access the best part of your instincts. So my advice to those people would be stop thinking and introspecting so much and do a little more acting. — Malcolm Gladwell

You can take a pitchman and make a great actor out of him, but you cannot take an actor and always make a great pitchman out of him," he says. The pitchman must make you applaud and take out your money. He must be able to execute what in pitchman's parlance is called "the turn" - the perilous, crucial moment where he goes from entertainer to businessman. — Malcolm Gladwell

People who are busy doing things - as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops -don't have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them. — Malcolm Gladwell

If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money. — Malcolm Gladwell

When you remove time," de becker says, "you are subject to the lowest-quality intuitive reaction — Malcolm Gladwell

Last year, the journalist Malcolm Gladwell conducted a survey of chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies for his book Blink. He discovered that while in the US population 14.5 per cent of all men are 6ft (1.83m) or taller, among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies the proportion is 58 per cent. And while 3.9 per cent of American adults are 6ft 2in or taller, almost a third of the CEOs were that tall. — Daniel Finkelstein

In the six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal. — Malcolm Gladwell

Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend- or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet- understands this implicitly; you can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face. — Malcolm Gladwell

What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily. — Malcolm Gladwell

Hey hey its Brooke im 12 and having trouble my teacher told me to get on here sooo yaaa see ya soon pic uplaodin soon!!!!!!!!!!!! — Malcolm Gladwell

Many of our students want to do what they have done and that has made them successful thus far in their lives: play by the rules, and do what is expected. But as much social science research and writing by Malcolm Gladwell, among others, make clear, the rules are mostly created by those already in power so obtaining power often entails standing out and breaking rules and social conventions. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

When I go to my health club, and it's in the basement, you have to take the elevator down. And this drives me crazy. Why can't there be a stairway? At least make it as easy to exercise as it is to not exercise. It's in society's interest for me to take the stairs. — Malcolm Gladwell

My rule is that if I interview someone, they should never read what I have to say about them and regret having given me the interview. — Malcolm Gladwell

Confusion over how a person's extraordinary skill is developed runs deep. The heated debate over writer Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule," as put forth i his popular book Outliers: The Story of Success, indicates that it is not just refeerees who get tongue-tied trying to pinpoint the fundaments of their expertise. Proficiency in activities from musicianship to athletics, Gladwell contends, can be achieved only through vast amount of practice (10,000 hours was the ballpark figure he cited, applying it to the triumphs of Bill Gates and the Beatles, among others.) — Bob Katz

What the Israelites saw, from high on the ridge, was an intimidating giant. In reality, the very thing that gave the giant his size was also the source of his greatest weakness. There is an important lesson in that for battles with all kinds of giants. The powerful and the strong are not always what they seem. — Malcolm Gladwell

You walk into the class in second grade. You can't read. What are you going to do if you're going to make it? You identify the smart kid. You make friends with him. You sit next to him. You grow a team around you. You delegate your work to others. You learn how to talk your way out of a tight spot. — Malcolm Gladwell

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen. — Malcolm Gladwell

If we want to, say, develop schools in disadvantaged communities that can successfully counteract the poisonous atmosphere of their surrounding neighborhoods, this tells us that we're probably better off building lots of little schools than one or two big ones. — Malcolm Gladwell

The principle elements of a puzzle all require the application of energy and persistence, which are the virtues of youth. Mysteries demand experience and insight. — Malcolm Gladwell

Movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Off to the side were dozens of keypunch machines - what passed in those days for computer terminals. — Malcolm Gladwell

In cross-country skiing, athletes propel themselves over distances of ten and twenty miles - a physical challenge that places intense demands on the ability of their red blood cells to deliver oxygen to their muscles. — Malcolm Gladwell

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

Don't get me wrong. I love my mother-in-law. It's her daughter I can't figure out. — Malcolm Gladwell

The biggest mistake we make is trying to square the way we feel about something today with the way we felt about it yesterday. You shouldn't even bother doing it. You should just figure out the way you feel today and if it happens to comply with what you thought before, fine. If it contradicts it, whatever. Life goes on. — Malcolm Gladwell

Are in perceptions of the taste and quality of the — Malcolm Gladwell

You need to have the ability to gracefully navigate the world. — Malcolm Gladwell

Through embracing the diversity of humans beings, we will find a sure way to true happiness. — Malcolm Gladwell

I'm in the storytelling business, and so you're always drawn to the unusual. And early on, I discovered that's the easiest way to tell stories. If you come up through a newspaper as I did, your whole goal is to get a story on the front page, and you only get something on the front page if it's unusual — Malcolm Gladwell

It changes how people read you if you believe in God. It gives insight into your motivation, how you look at problems and how you deal with people. — Malcolm Gladwell

Situation is. The flight engineer points to the empty fuel gauge, and makes a throat-cutting gesture with his finger.* But he says nothing. Nor does anyone else for the next five minutes. There's radio chatter and routine business, and then the flight engineer cries — Malcolm Gladwell

To play by David's rules you have to be desperate. You have to be so bad that you have no choice. — Malcolm Gladwell

So, it's a very, you know - maybe we're wrong in - you know, we go around thinking the innovator is the person who's first to kind of conceive of something. And maybe the innovation process continues down the line to the second and the third and the fourth entrant into a field. — Malcolm Gladwell

Telling teenagers about the health risks of smoking - It will make you wrinkled! It will make you impotent! It will make you dead! - is useless," Harris concludes. "This is adult propaganda; these are adult arguments. It is because adults don't approve of smoking - because there is something dangerous and disreputable about it - that teenagers want to do it. — Malcolm Gladwell

But is the commercial theory of learning true? Daniel Anderson says that new research suggests that children actually don't like commercials as much as we thought they did because commercials don't tell stories, and stories have a particular salience and importance to young people. — Malcolm Gladwell

Mimicry, they argue, is also one of the means by which we infect each other with our emotions. In other words, if I smile and you see me and smile in response - even a microsmile that takes no more than several milliseconds - it's not just you imitating or empathizing with me. It may also be a way that I can pass on my happiness to you. — Malcolm Gladwell

We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don't spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options. — Malcolm Gladwell

We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight — Malcolm Gladwell

I'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 Gladwell

I don't really collect books. I tend to lose interest in them the minute I've read them, so most of the books I've read are left in airplanes and hotel rooms. — Malcolm Gladwell

Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification - then you learn to value it differently. — Malcolm Gladwell

As human beings we are a lot more sophisticated about each other than we are about the abstract world. — Malcolm Gladwell

That term, 'David and Goliath,' has entered our language as a metaphor for improbable victories by some weak party over someone far stronger. — Malcolm Gladwell

Of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs. — Malcolm Gladwell

Extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make — Malcolm Gladwell

dietary practices — Malcolm Gladwell

I mean, it's ridiculous," Dhuey says. "It's outlandish that our arbitrary choice of cutoff dates is causing these long-lasting effects, and no one seems to care about them. — Malcolm Gladwell

Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the "work" 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 Gladwell

There were history's gifts to my family-and if the resources of that grocer, the fruits of those riots, the possibilities of that culture, and the privileges of that skin tone had been extended to others, how many more would now live a life of fulfillment, in a beautiful house high on a hill? — 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

There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria. — Malcolm Gladwell

As it may be - matters. How you feel about your abilities - your academic "self-concept" - in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It's a crucial element in your motivation and confidence. — Malcolm Gladwell

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

What track needs to figure out: how to engage us between the races. Instead, the entire off-the-track conversation is about doping. This is how you kill a sport. — Malcolm Gladwell

But we need to remember that our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. — Malcolm Gladwell

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 Gladwell

The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence." To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for for maximum effect. — Malcolm Gladwell

When 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 - and 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 she's 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 "smart"? — Malcolm Gladwell

High-tech companies like Google or Microsoft carefully measure the cognitive abilities of prospective employees out of the same belief: they are convinced that those at the very top of the IQ scale have the greatest potential. — Malcolm Gladwell

I am like a decapitated pine. Pine trees do not regenerate their tops. They stay twisted, crippled.They grow in thickness, perhaps, and that is what I am doing. — Malcolm Gladwell

Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from the board game Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take five minutes beforehand to think about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6 percent of the questions right. The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right. The "professor" group didn't know more than the "soccer hooligan" group. They weren't smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a "smart" frame of mind, and, clearly, associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a professor, made it a lot easier - in that stressful instant after a trivia question was asked - to blurt out the right answer. — Malcolm Gladwell

We need to accept our ignorance and say 'I don't know' more often. — Malcolm Gladwell

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence. — Malcolm Gladwell