the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t wor… - Malcolm Gladwell

The people at the top don't just work harder. They work much, much harder.

"The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture. They are famously "the people of the book." There is surely something to that. But it wasn't just the children of rabbis who went to law school. It was the children of garment workers. And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on Hester Street."

"when you remove time," de becker says, "you are subject to the lowest-quality intuitive reaction"

The conviction that we know others better than they know us — and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa) — leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.