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We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.

Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Humans
Blink
Come
Quick
Really
Explanation
Things
Beings
Bits
Success
Problem
Outliers
Human
Explanations

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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I'm a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends.
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If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money.
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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.
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There are lots of issues more important than where billionaires donate their money.
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I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don't affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart. (p.251)
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Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard.
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The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time.
Malcolm Gladwell
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I have a new way of doing things, and I don’t care if you think I’m crazy.
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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.
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...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.
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The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Our intuitions, as humans, aren't always very good. Changes that happen really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Track is full of the absolute nicest and most polite athletes in all of sports, and where does it get us?
Malcolm Gladwell
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I think actually the marketing community is approaching a crisis: There are just too many messages competing for too little attention. That is the fundamental problem.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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
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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 the role preparation seems to play.
Malcolm Gladwell
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If we think about emotion this way - as outside-in, not inside out - it is possible to understand how some people can have an enormous amount of influence over others. Some of us, after all, are very good at expressiing emotions and feelings, which means that we are far more emotionally contagious than the rest of us.
Malcolm Gladwell
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When it's easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent.
Malcolm Gladwell
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We tend to credit those who create an idea, not those who perfect it, forgetting that it is often only in the perfection of an idea that true progress occurs. Putting sixty-four transistors on a chip allowed people to dream of the future. Putting four million transistors on a chip actually gave them the future.
Malcolm Gladwell