Quote

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

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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Success
Merit
Idea
Rules
Individual
Function
Write
Choose
Ideas
Grow
Matter
Grows
Writing
Society
Outliers
World
Simple
Cling

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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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.
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If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.
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What is learned out of hard work and trial is inevitably more powerful than what is learned easily.
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When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.
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Living a long life, the conventional wisdom at the time said, depended to a great extent on who we were-that is, our genes. It depended on the decisions we made-on what we chose to eat, and how much we chose to exercise, and how effectively we were treated by the medical system. No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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.
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In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.
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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.
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There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.
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So the first task of a police force is not to fight crime and enforce the law. It is to establish legitimacy with the law-abiding citizenry and then fight crime and enforce the law.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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
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We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.
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If you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.
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?
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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
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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.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Six degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.
Malcolm Gladwell
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What track needs to figure out: how to engage us between the races. Instead, the entire off-the-track conversation is about doping. This is how you kill a sport.
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It's very hard to find someone who's successful and dislikes what they do.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Instinct is the gift of experience. The first question you have to ask yourself is, 'On what basis am I making a judgment?' ... If you have no experience, then your instincts aren't any good.
Malcolm Gladwell