Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

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.

Visionaries are limited by their visions.

An incredibly high percentage of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. That's one of the little-known facts.

If people disobey, don't ask what is wrong with them, ask what's wrong with their leaders.

Since becoming a journalist, each time I engage with subjects I become more radicalized.

I'm a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends.

You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.

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.

The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.

There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.

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.

Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise. Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise.

Now I basically just read spy stories because they're about solving a puzzle within the constraints of history. It's the tick tock, the clockwork that I'm interested in.

There are some people, who I'll charitably call snobs, who are dismissive of any conversation that doesn't begin with the full level of complexity. That's just not how the world works.

I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite.

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.

Part of me thinks that innovation, real innovation in health care delivery, needs to happen from the bottom to the top.

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.

Occasions when you can change your mind should be cherished, because they mean you're smarter than you were before.

Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. the internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency.

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.

Sometimes [genius] is just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.

It's very hard to find someone who's successful and dislikes what they do.

Change your mind about something significant every day.

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

If you're in business it's both a promise and a warning. It says that sometimes little things can cause some little guy to have an overnight success.

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.

Instead of thinking about talent as something that you acquire, talent should be thought of as something that you develop.

I have a new way of doing things, and I don’t care if you think I’m crazy.

It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values.

Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer.

understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.

extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.

You can't concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What's gonna happen if it doesn't go right?

...mediocre people find their way into positions of authority...because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.

Performance ought to improve with experience, and pressure is an obstacle that the diligent can overcome.

When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.

If you play an audiotape of a yawn to blind people, they'll yawn too.

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

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

The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and have a well-developed sense of independence.

You need to have the ability to gracefully navigate the world.

Asian culture has a profoundly different relationship to work. It rewards people who are persistent.

I think that persistence and stubbornness and hard work are probably, at the end of the day, more important than the willingness to take a risk.

The issue isn't the accuracy of the bombs you have, it's how you use the bombs you have - and more importantly, whether you ought to use bombs at all.

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

Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement.

The goal of storytelling should be to make stories as ubiquitous as music.

It's as if you were interested in fashion and your neighbor when you were growing up happened to be Giorgio Armani.

In a country that never wins anything: in Canada, if one of our athletes so much as makes the final in a World Championship, we declare a national holiday.