Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

Arousal leaves us mind-blind.

Working really hard is what successful people do, and the genius of the culture formed in the rice paddies is that hard work gave those in the fields a way to find meaning in the midst of great uncertainty and poverty.

Schools could do the same thing. Elementary and middle schools could put the January through April–born students in one class, the May through August in another class, and those born in September through December in the third class. They could let students learn with and compete against other students of the same maturity level. It would be a little bit more complicated administratively. But it wouldn’t necessarily cost that much more money, and it would level the playing field for those who — through no fault of their own — have been dealt a big disadvantage by the educational system. We could easily take control of the machinery of achievement, in other words — not just in sports but, as we will see, in other more consequential areas as well. But we don’t. And why? Because 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.

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

All of us, when it comes to personality, naturally think in terms of absolutes: that a person is a certain way or is not a certain way. But what Zimbardo and Hartshorne and May are suggesting is that this is a mistake, that when we think only in terms of inherent traits and forget the role of situations, we're deceiving ourselves about the real causes of human behavior.

If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can’t need social approval to go forward.

[Greenberg] knew that cultural legacies matter — that they are powerful and pervasive and that they persist, long after their original usefulness has passed. But he didn't assume that legacies are an indelible part of who we are. He believed that if the Koreans were honest about where they came from and were willing to confront those aspects of their heritage that did not suit the aviation world, they could change.

"Grazer and Cohn - two outsiders with learning disabilities-played a trick. They bluffed their way into professions that would have been closed to them. The man in the cab assumed that no one would be so audacious as to say he knew how to trade options if he didn't. And it never occurred to the people Brian Grazer called that when he said he was Brian Grazer from Warner Brothers, what he meant was that he was Brian Grazer who pushed the mail cart around at Warner Brothers. What they did is not "right," just as it is not "right" to send children against police dogs. But we need to remember that our definition of what right is, often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has nothing to lose, and because he has nothing to lose, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set by others. That's how people with brains a little bit different from the rest of ours get jobs as options traders and Hollywood producers-and a small band of protesters armed with nothing but their wits have a chance against the likes of Bull Connor"

What Jaffe proved was that the powerful have to worry about how others think of them-that those who give orders are acutely vulnerable to the opinions of those whom they are ordering about.

People are ruined by challenged economic lives. But they are ruined by wealth as well because they lose their ambition and they lose their pride and they lose their sense of self-worth

But the better answer is that Hotchkiss has simply fallen into the trap that wealthy people and wealthy institutions and wealthy countries — all Goliaths — too often fall into: the school assumes that the kinds of things that wealth can buy always translate into real-world advantages.

Of course, kids don't always like repetition. Whatever they are watching has to be complex enough to allow, upon repeated exposure, for deeper and deeper levels of comprehension. At the same time, it can't be so complex that the first time around it baffles the children and turns them off.

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.

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.

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature.