Malcolm Gladwell quotes
Malcolm Gladwell is an English-born Canadian author, journalist, and public speaker born on September 3, 1963, in Fareham, United Kingdom. He came up with the 10000-hour rule that can help you achieve mastery and become an expert in whatever skill or field you are in.
He is the Author of Five New York Times best-selling books and was named on Time Magazine’s Top 100 most influential people in 2005. In addition, he hosts the podcast Revisionist History and is co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries. Below are some of the best quotes in his books, inspiration, achievements, writing, leadership, motivation and so much more that will give a dose of wisdom daily.
Famous Malcolm Gladwell Quotes
Explore some of his most famous quotes and sayings on achievements, hard work, and motivation.
- ….. it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions. — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Achievement is talent plus preparation.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “IQ is a measure, to some degree, of innate ability. But social savvy is knowledge. It’s a set of skills that have to be learned. It has to come from somewhere, and the place where we seem to get these kinds of attitudes and skills is from our families.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation. — Malcolm Gladwell
- To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Knowledge of a boy’s IQ is of little help if you are faced with a formful of clever boys. — Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell quotes On Leadership
- “We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning” — Malcolm Gladwell
- There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it. — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- I think when one’s working, one works between absolute confidence and absolute doubt, and I got a huge dallop of each. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me. — Malcolm Gladwell
- 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. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Words belong to the person who wrote them. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Happiness, in one sense, is a function of how closely our world conforms to the infinite variety of human preference. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Underdog strategies are hard. — Malcolm Gladwell
- We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight. — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out. — Malcolm Gladwell
- An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The principle elements of a puzzle all require the application of energy and persistence, which are the virtues of youth. Mysteries demand experience and insight. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage. — Malcolm Gladwell
- General intelligence and practical intelligence are “orthogonal”: the presence of one doesn’t imply the presence of the other. — Malcolm Gladwell
- 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. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Why are man hole covers around?” If you don’t knwo the answer to the questions, you’re not smart enough to work at Microsoft. — Malcolm Gladwell
- But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine. — Malcolm Gladwell
- 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. — Malcolm Gladwell
- We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Arousal leaves us mind-blind. — Malcolm Gladwell
- No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. — Malcolm Gladwell
Inspirational Malcolm Gladwell Quotes
- All progress depends on the unreasonable man. — Malcolm Gladwell
- [Practical intelligence is] practical in nature: that is, it’s now knowledge for its own sake. It’s knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want. — Malcolm Gladwell
- “It’s not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues… I’m someone who changes his mind all the time. — Malcolm Gladwell
- We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The older I get, the more I understand that the only way to say valuable things is to lose your fear of being correct. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Take the great example of the four-minute mile. One guy breaks it, then all of a sudden everyone breaks it. And they break it in such a short period of time that it can’t be because they were training harder. It’s purely that it was a psychological barrier, and someone had to show them that they could do it. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Age-class running, as you know, is completely unreliable. It’s based on this artificial thing, which is that people who are the same age have the same level of physical maturity. Which just isn’t true. — Malcolm Gladwell
- There is an important idea in psychology: The ‘just world theory,’ which says that it is very important for us to convince ourselves that the world is just and things happen for a reason. That there is some elemental fairness in everything, which creates the illusion of justice. — Malcolm Gladwell
- In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The paradox of endurance sports is that an athlete can never work as hard as he wants because if he pushes himself too far, his hematocrit will fall. — Malcolm Gladwell
- What do we tell our children? Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don’t judge a book by its cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we’ve done it for, I think, too long. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I’m a lot more interested in people than I used to be. I used to be most interested in abstract ideas, and people were an afterthought, but that’s changed a bit. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Rarely do we stop and consider whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interest. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The two contemporary writers whom I consider as role models are Janet Malcolm and Michael Lewis. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The best example of how impossible it will be for Major League Baseball to crack down on steroids is the fact that baseball and the media are still talking about the problem as ‘steroids. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Does that mean we should give up? Probably. But there are two issues worth considering. The first is – is it really true that drugs destroy the integrity of the game? — Malcolm Gladwell
- So, it’s a very, you know – maybe we’re wrong in – you know, we go around thinking the innovator is the person who’s first to kind of conceive of something. And maybe the innovation process continues down the line to the second and the third and the fourth entrant into a field. — Malcolm Gladwell
- My books have contradictions all the time – and people are fine with that. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The willingness to be self-critical in England is much greater than the willingness to be self-critical in America. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I’m just trying to say that it should reassure us that the inevitable traumas of being human do end up producing some good. Otherwise, the human condition is overwhelmingly depressing. — Malcolm Gladwell
- An incredibly high percentage of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. That’s one of the little-known facts. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If you’re last in your class at Harvard, it doesn’t feel like you’re a good student, even though you really are. It’s not smart for everyone to want to go to a great school. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist, Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn’t read them: You’re not the audience! — Malcolm Gladwell
- I have profoundly mixed feelings about the Affordable Care Act. What I love about it is its impulse. It attempts to deal with this intractable problem in American health care life, which is that a significant portion of the population does not have access to quality medical care. — Malcolm Gladwell
- We aren’t, as human beings, very good at acting in our best interest. — Malcolm Gladwell
- My mother read me biblical stories at night. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If Harvard is $60,000 and University of Toronto, where I went to school, is maybe six. So you’re really telling me that education is 10 times better at Harvard than it is at University of Toronto? That seems ridiculous to me. — Malcolm Gladwell
- A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If I was President of the United States, I’d rather be right than interesting. If I was CEO of a company, I’d rather be right than interesting. But I’m a journalist – what journalist would rather be right than interesting? — Malcolm Gladwell
- Many people with dyslexia truly suffer, and their lives are worse off for having had that disability. — Malcolm Gladwell
- All my books are optimistic! — Malcolm Gladwell
- I have never read any Tolstoy. I felt badly about this until I read a Bill Simmons column where he confessed that he’d never seen ‘The Big Lebowski.’ Simmons, it should be pointed out, has seen everything. He said that everyone needs to have skipped at least one great cultural touchstone. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I don’t understand, given the constraints physicians have in doing their job and the paperwork demanded of them, why people want to be physicians. I think we’ve made it very, very difficult for them to perform their job. I think that’s a shame. — Malcolm Gladwell
- That term, ‘David and Goliath,’ has entered our language as a metaphor for improbable victories by some weak party over someone far stronger. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I don’t golf. I’ve never golfed. I will never golf. — Malcolm Gladwell
- When you write about sports, you’re allowed to engage in mischief. Nothing is at stake. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The great accomplishment of Jobs’s life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies – his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness – in the service of perfection. — Malcolm Gladwell
- There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There’s a reasonable shot that – because of his money – we will cure malaria. — Malcolm Gladwell
- You think it matters to the kids whether they’re learning to play on a Steinway or a normal piano? — Malcolm Gladwell
- An aggressive drug-testing program would cut down on certain abuses, but its never going to catch everyone – or even close to everyone. — Malcolm Gladwell
- You don’t want to be first, right? You want to be second or third. You don’t want to be – Facebook is not the first in social media. They’re the third, right? Similarly, you know, if you look at Steve Jobs’ history, he’s never been first. — Malcolm Gladwell
- 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. — Malcolm Gladwell
- We should be firing bad teachers. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If you’re skinny and you can’t play hockey in Canada, you aren’t left with a lot of options. I was left with running. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I never had those dreams of making the Olympics. Never. — Malcolm Gladwell
- We used to say poor people had lousy genes. Then we decided that wasn’t OK, but we transferred the prejudice to upbringing. We said, ‘You were neglected as a child, so you’ll never make it.’ That’s just as pernicious. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If you go to an elite school where the other students in your class are all really brilliant, you run the risk of mistakenly believing yourself to not be a good student. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. — Malcolm Gladwell
- There is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we’ve been. That brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in academia and never sees the light of day. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Part of me thinks that innovation, real innovation in health care delivery, needs to happen from the bottom to the top. — Malcolm Gladwell
- When I go to my health club, and it’s in the basement, you have to take the elevator down. And this drives me crazy. Why can’t there be a stairway? At least make it as easy to exercise as it is to not exercise. It’s in society’s interest for me to take the stairs. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The underdog winning is the romantic position. — Malcolm Gladwell
- From medieval tapestries, we know that slingers were capable of hitting birds in flight. They were incredibly accurate. — Malcolm Gladwell
- The most common form of giantism is a condition called acromegaly, and acromegaly is caused by a benign tumor on your pituitary gland that causes an overproduction of human growth hormone. And throughout history, many of the most famous giants have all had acromegaly. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Do you remember the wrestler Andre the Giant? Famous. He had acromegaly. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I try to be unafraid of making a fool of myself. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I grew up in southwestern Ontario in the heart of a Mennonite community. All my family are part of the Mennonite church. Malcolm Gladwell
- I’ve had the most untraumatic life a human being can have. But I’ve always been drawn to those who have had far more complicated histories. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties. — Malcolm Gladwell
- You don’t train someone for all of those years of medical school and residency, particularly people who want to help others optimize their physical and psychological health, and then have them run a claims-processing operation for insurance companies. — Malcolm Gladwell
- A handicap is like trying to race and you have a ten pound weight stuck to your waist. That is a handicap. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I remember as a kid watching one of the Olympic games, and I was cheering for a big track athlete. He was the favorite to win, and he lost. I realized in that moment the pain he felt was so much greater than the pain that those who never thought they were going to win would have felt had they lost. — Malcolm Gladwell
- All three of the great waves of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America innovated. — Malcolm Gladwell
- People in great institutions are occasionally credulous.
- It is useful to compare the Branch Davidians with the Mormons of the mid-nineteenth century. The Mormons were vilified in those years in large part because Joseph Smith believed in polygamy. — Malcolm Gladwell
- In cross-country skiing, athletes propel themselves over distances of ten and twenty miles – a physical challenge that places intense demands on the ability of their red blood cells to deliver oxygen to their muscles. — Malcolm Gladwell
- In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals. Nobody walks into an operating room straight out of a surgical rotation and does world-class neurosurgery. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I don’t think I will ever write about politics or foreign policy. I feel like there is so much good writing in those areas that I have little to add. I also like to steer clear of writing about people whom I do not personally like. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research… for ways of augmenting story-telling. Malcolm Gladwell As a writer, the best mindset is to be unafraid. — Malcolm Gladwell
- We all assume that if you’re weak and poor, you’re never going to win. In fact, the real world is full of examples where the exact opposite happens, where the weak win and the strong screw up. — Malcolm Gladwell
- If you’re smarter than me, you shouldn’t be reading my books. Malcolm Gladwell People assume when my hair is long that I am a lot cooler than I actually am. I am not opposed to this misconception, by the way, but it is a misconception. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I don’t want a door bell. I don’t want anyone ringing my door bell… seems to be intrusive. They can call me on their cell phones. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Shallow communities are relatively easy to build. — Malcolm Gladwell
- For some small number of people, a parental loss appears to be, ultimately, a desirable difficulty – again, not a large number. — Malcolm Gladwell
- I am far more distress-avoidant than I am joy-seeking. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Books about spies and traitors – and the congressional hearings that follow the exposure of traitors – generally assume that false-negative errors are much worse than false-positive errors. — Malcolm Gladwell
- In the government’s eyes, the Branch Davidians were a threat. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Countless religious innovators over the years have played the game of establishing an identity for themselves by accentuating their otherness. — Malcolm Gladwell
- Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community. — Malcolm Gladwell
- A runner needs not just to be skinny but – more specifically – to have skinny calves and ankles, because every extra pound carried on your extremities costs more than a pound carried on your torso. That’s why shaving even a few ounces off a pair of running shoes can have a significant effect. — Malcolm Gladwell
- When people from organizations like the World Bank descended on Third World countries, they always tried to remove obstacles to development, to reduce economic anxiety and uncertainty. — Malcolm Gladwell
- My rule is that if I interview someone, they should never read what I have to say about them and regret having given me the interview. — Malcolm Gladwell
- You walk into the class in second grade. You can’t read. What are you going to do if you’re going to make it? You identify the smart kid. You make friends with him. You sit next to him. You grow a team around you. You delegate your work to others. You learn how to talk your way out of a tight spot. — Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell Quotes in books
Malcolm Gladwell’s books are filled with wisdom and inspiration. Read on to find out some of his best quotes on success, achievement and so much more.
Outliers Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell
- “Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
- “Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
- “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.” ― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
- “For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question that most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do – the innately talented ones. Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger role preparation seems to play.” ― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
- “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, Outliers
- “Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, 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 work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.” ― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
The Tipping Point Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell
- “Emotion is contagious.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
- “A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
- “Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
- “We have, in short, somehow become convinced that we need to tackle the whole problem, all at once. But the truth is that we don’t. We only need to find the sticky Tipping Points.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
- “As human beings we are a lot more sophisticated about each other than we are about the abstract world.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
- “Character isn’t what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn’t a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Talking to Strangers Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell
- “We have a default to truth: our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are honest.”— Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “Defaulting to truth is a problem. It lets spies and con artists roam free.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “If suicide is coupled, then it isn’t simply the act of depressed people. It’s the act of depressed people at a particular moment of extreme vulnerability and in combination with a particular, readily available lethal means.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “We are bad lie detectors in those situations when the person we’re judging is mismatched.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “Puzzle Number One: Why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face?” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “Don’t look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger’s world.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “The people who were right about Hitler were those who knew the least about him personally. The people who were wrong about Hitler were the ones who had talked with him for hours.”— Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “That’s the consequence of not defaulting to truth. If you don’t begin in a state of trust, you can’t have meaningful social encounters.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “We think we can transform the stranger, without cost or sacrifice, into the familiar and the known, and we can’t.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
- “The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
Blink Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell
- “In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- “There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- “When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- “Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn’t happen.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- “The real me isn’t the person I describe, no the real me is the me revealed by my actions.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we really don’t have an explanation for.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- “We need to accept our ignorance and say ‘I don’t know’ more often.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- “Don’t depend on heaven for food, but on your own two hands carrying the load.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very ‘gifted’ improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “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.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Some pretend to be rich, yet have nothing; others pretend to be poor, yet have great wealth.”
- “When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate circumstance.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Imagine that you are a doctor and you suddenly learn that you’ll see twenty patients on a Friday afternoon instead of twenty-five, while getting paid the same. Would you respond by spending more time with each patient? Or would you simply leave at six-thirty instead of seven-thirty and have dinner with your kids?” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “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…. Spontaneity isn’t random.” — Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell 10000 Hour Quotes
- “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fischer got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what’s ten years? Well, it’s roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours quote
- Capitalization learning”: we get good at something by building on the strengths that we are naturally given. — Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell quotes On Success
- “Working really hard is what successful people do…” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- It’s very hard to find someone who’s successful and dislikes what they do. — Malcolm Gladwell
- “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “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.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “To be someone’s best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing…. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions … by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “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. — Malcolm Gladwell
- “The world we could have is so much richer than the world we have settled for.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “There is a set of advantages that have to do with material resources, and there is a set that have to do with the absence of material resources- and the reason underdogs win as often as they do is that the latter is sometimes every bit the equal of the former.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “Much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of (these) one-sided conflicts. Because the act of facing overwhelming odds, produces greatness and beauty.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “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.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- “For younger kids, repetition is really valuable. They demand it. When they see a show over and over again, they not only are understanding it better, which is a form of power, but just by predicting what is going to happen, I think they feel a real sense of affirmation and self-worth.” — Malcolm Gladwell
- 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. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing? — Malcolm Gladwell