Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

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.

Today we are now thrown into contact all the time with people whose assumptions, perspectives, and backgrounds are different from our own. The modern world is not two brothers feuding for control of the Ottoman Empire. It is Cortés and Montezuma struggling to understand each other through multiple layers of translators. Talking to Strangers is about why we are so bad at that act of translation.

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.

capitalization learning”: we get good at something by building on the strengths that we are naturally given.

A woman who walks away from the promise of power finds the strength to forgive – and saves her friendship, her marriage, and her sanity. The world is turned upside down.

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.

"Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action."(p.115)

All the outliers we’ve looked at so far were the beneficiaries of some kind of unusual opportunity. Lucky breaks don’t seem like the exception with software billionaires and rock bands and star athletes. They seem like the rule.

He was maxed out. He had no
resources left to do anything else. That's what happens
when you're tired. Your decision-making skills erode. You
start missing things — things that you would pick up on
any other day.

We start by believing. And we stop believing only when our doubts and misgivings rise to the point where we can no longer explain them away.

We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we’re well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding.

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

We need to accept our ignorance and say ‘I don’t know’ more often.

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.

There is a concept in cognitive psychology called the channel capacity, which refers to the amount of space in our brain for certain kinds of information.