If you make a great number of predictions, the ones that were wrong will soon be forgotten, and the ones that turn out to be true will make you famous.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
“Dangerous Minds: Criminal Profiling Made Easy,” The New Yorker (12 Nov 2007)
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Quotations by:
Gladwell, Malcolm
Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013)
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Legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice — that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can’t treat one group differently from another.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013)
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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 (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, ch. 2 “The 10,000 Hour Rule,” sec. 2 (2008)
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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 (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, ch. 1 “The Matthew Effect,” sec. 5 (2008)
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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 (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, ch. 5, sec. 10 (2008)
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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 (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, Part 1, ch. 1 (2008)
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Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, Part 1, ch. 5, sec. 10 (2008)
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To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success — the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history — with a society that provides opportunities for all.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, Part 2, ch. 9 (2008)
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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 (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, Part 2, ch. 9 (2008)
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You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know (2019)
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Doubts are not the enemy of belief, they are its companion.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Talking to Strangers (2019)
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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’re really like to be.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, Introduction (2009)