Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell - Page 8

People are in one of two states in a relationship,” Gottman went on. “The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It’s like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s just in a crummy mood.’ Or they can be in negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Negative
People
Two
Copy Quote
We spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out who's going to be a good NFL quarterback, and we do a very bad job of it. We don't really know. And we also spend a lot of time trying to figure out who will be a good teacher, and we're really bad at that too. We don't know if someone is going to be a good teacher when they start teaching. So what should we do in those situations in which predictions are useless?
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Jobs
Teacher
Teaching
Copy Quote
It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Opportunity
Successful
Teaching
Copy Quote
Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. 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 / Journalist
Opportunity
Mean
Thinking
Copy Quote
Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer ... But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable ... They are people willing to take social risks-to do things that others might disapprove of.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Creativity
Ideas
Persistence
Copy Quote
I write my books to challenge my own feelings and theories. Perhaps most surprising was what I learned about rice farming. It was really interesting to think of how different Asian and Western cultures are as a result of the kinds of agricultural practices that our ancestors used for thousands of years. The life of a Chinese peasant in the Middle Ages was so dramatically different from the life of a European peasant - night and day different.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Book
Night
Writing
Copy Quote
When I see someone who reads something of mine and draws something out of it that's very different from my perspective, I think that's actually cool. Sometimes it's worrisome when you feel they badly misinterpret it, but it just says that they're thinking, and they're bringing their own interpretation to bear on it. [...] That's part of the wonderful thing about putting words into the world, and if I was worried about that, I couldn't be a writer.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Different
Perspective
Thinking
Copy Quote
Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Giving
Thinking
Writing
Copy Quote
The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Effort
People
Real
Copy Quote
Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Opportunity
Lying
Math
Copy Quote
Lands' End has undergone three major changes over the past couple of decades. The first was the introduction of an 800 number, in 1978; the second was express delivery, in 1994; and the third was the introduction of a Web site, in 1995. The first two innovations cut the average transaction time-the time between the moment of ordering and the moment the goods are received-from three weeks to four days. The third innovation has cut the transaction time from four days to, well, four days.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Couple
Cutting
Past
Copy Quote
The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Book
Fashion
Teenage
Copy Quote
Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is the critical lesson of improve, too, and it is also a key to understanding a puzzle of Millennium Challenge: spontaneity isn't random.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Running
Basketball
Practice
Copy Quote
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 / Journalist
Beer
Epidemics
Ideas
Copy Quote
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. 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 / Journalist
School
Simple
Smart
Copy Quote
And my advice for college graduates is don't reflexively give money to your alma mater, something particular to Americans that I find extraordinary. Take Princeton, for example - it has more money on a per capita basis than any educational institution in the history of educational institutions. There is no scenario where it can spend all the money its endowment generates every year. If there is anyone who gives a single dollar to Princeton, they have completely lost their mind. I will say that without reservation.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
College
Educational
Giving
Copy Quote
A study at the University of Utah found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he’ll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, you’ll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. We’re friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble. We don’t seek out friends, in other words. We associate with the people who occupy the same small, physical spaces that we do.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Attitude
Two
Utah
Copy Quote
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.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Book
Children
Father
Copy Quote
I don't go to an office, so I write at home. I like to write in the morning, if possible; that's when my mind is freshest. I might write for a couple of hours, and then I head out to have lunch and read the paper. Then I write for a little bit longer if I can, then probably go to the library or make some phone calls. Every day is a little bit different. I'm not highly routinized, so I spend a lot of time wandering around New York City with my laptop in my bag, wondering where I'm going to end up next. It's a fairly idyllic life for someone who likes writing.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
New York
Home
Morning
Couple
Copy Quote
The iPod is clearly a tipping point (and I'm not quite sure it is a wholly positive development), because it is a revolution in the way that we consume creative property, which I would call art. It has radically changed the relationship between the artist and the audience, how money changes hands, and how much money changes hands. Music was the first, and books are coming next. The Kindle or some form of electronic book is clearly inevitable, and it will massively reshape how books are sold, who pays for them, and how they're consumed. It is going to be really fascinating.
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Art
Book
Hands
Copy Quote
The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?
Malcolm Gladwell / Journalist
Success
Spring
Teenager
Copy Quote

Related Journalist Authors

H. L. Mencken
Journalist
Sunday, Sep 12, 1880
Sunday, Jan 29, 1956
Zoë Heller
Journalist
Wednesday, Jul 07, 1965
Yvan Audouard
Journalist
Friday, Feb 27, 1914
Sunday, Mar 21, 2004
Yuri Bezmenov
Journalist
Yoshiko Sakurai
Journalist
Wednesday, Oct 10, 1945
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Journalist
Saturday, Dec 10, 1949
Yang Lan
Journalist
Sunday, Mar 31, 1968
Yahtzee Croshaw
Journalist
Tuesday, May 24, 1983
Xinran
Journalist
Ximenes Doudan
Journalist
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas
Journalist
Saturday, Aug 15, 1908
Wednesday, Feb 04, 1987
Wolf Blitzer
Journalist
Monday, Mar 22, 1948
William Seabrook
Journalist
Friday, Feb 22, 1884
Thursday, Sep 20, 1945
William Robertson Nicoll
Journalist
Friday, Oct 10, 1851
Friday, May 04, 1923
William Rees-Mogg
Journalist
Saturday, Jul 14, 1928
Saturday, Dec 29, 2012

View All Journalist Quotes

Top Authors

Robin Williams
Actor
Saturday, Jul 21, 1951
Monday, Aug 11, 2014
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poet
Wednesday, Oct 21, 1772
Friday, Jul 25, 1834
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Nelson Mandela
Former President Of South Africa
Thursday, Jul 18, 1918
Thursday, Dec 05, 2013
Zig Ziglar
Author
Saturday, Nov 06, 1926
Wednesday, Nov 28, 2012
Tyler, The Creator
Rapper
Wednesday, Mar 06, 1991
Martin Luther
Monk
Saturday, Nov 10, 1483
Monday, Feb 18, 1546
Julius Caesar
Roman Dictator
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Saint Augustine
Saint
Saturday, Nov 13, 0354
Wednesday, Aug 28, 0430
Leonardo Da Vinci
Painter
Thursday, Apr 15, 1452
Friday, May 02, 1519
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991
H. L. Mencken
Journalist
Sunday, Sep 12, 1880
Sunday, Jan 29, 1956
Walt Disney
Animator
Thursday, Dec 05, 1901
Thursday, Dec 15, 1966
Plato
Philosopher
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Thursday, Jan 01, 1970
Vincent Van Gogh
Painter
Wednesday, Mar 30, 1853
Tuesday, Jul 29, 1890

View All Authors

Malcolm Gladwell Quotes - Page 8

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Journalist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

Picture Quotes Maker

Related Journalist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page