Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Work
Asking
Unravel
Kind
Succeed
Explanations
People
Behinds
Succeeds
Behind
Explanation
Personal
Convince
Success
Rise
Doesn
Logic
Nothing
Kinds
Outliers

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

Image
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
Image
If you look at the careers of great entrepreneurs and you look at the moment they took their plunge, the plunge is rarely a great financial or material risk, it’s a social risk. At the moment they started their new businesses, everyone around them said ‘you’re an idiot’.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
...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.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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
Image
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.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
The Rule of 150 says that congregants of a rapidly expanding church, or the members of a social club, or anyone in a group activity banking on the epidemic spread of shared ideals needs to be particularly cognizant of the perils of the bigness. Crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a big difference.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
There's no idea that can't be explained to a thoughtful 14-year-old. If the thoughtful 14-year-old doesn't get it, it is your fault, not the 14-year-old's.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - The Sports Gene - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an all-star challenge on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decat
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
I would say first of all, anyone who wants to challenge the status quo always gets that response. Ninety percent of the time, that's just bull. That's just the way in which people choose to prop up their own privilege or their own particular position. So mostly I shrug it off.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
An incredibly high percentage of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. That's one of the little-known facts.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
The conventional wisdom is often wrong. Crime didn't keep soaring in the 1990s, money alone doesn't win elections, and - surprise - drinking eight glasses of water a day has never actually been shown to do a thing for your health. Conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through, but it can be done.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
All artists have to do that at a certain point. This shift that has to happen between the initial moment of creation and then the consideration of what has been created.
Malcolm Gladwell