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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.

Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Succeed
Failing
Write
Dismissive
Writing
Outliers
Much
Prematurely
People
Awe
Failures
Fail

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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You may hate Hillary Clinton and you may have good reason for hating Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton is one person who even if she's elected will be gone one day and you still have the task of keeping American democracy going.
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If there is one thing I learned by reading Epstein's The Sports Gene it is that world-class athletes are, by definition, abnormal: that is, the kind of person capable of competing at that level is necessarily very different from the rest of us physiologically. They are outliers.
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Asian culture has a profoundly different relationship to work. It rewards people who are persistent.
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Take a random group of 8-year-old American and Japanese kids, give them all a really, really hard math problem, and start a stopwatch. The American kids will give up after 30, 40 seconds. If you let the test run for 15 minutes, the Japanese kids will not have given up. You have to take it away.
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That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.
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People don't rise from nothing.
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Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas.
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We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility.
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Every cop will tell you that their real job is being a social worker. That's what they do all day. The large majority of police officers in this country never even draw their gun, let alone fire it. They do conflict resolution, right? And if that's their job, why do they need to look like they're an occupying force?
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Activism that challenges the status quo, that attacks deeply rooted problems, is not for the faint of heart.
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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.
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Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time.
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I know it sounds hard to believe, but habits laid down by our ancestors persist even after the conditions that created those habits have gone away.
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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?
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Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.
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The first person who throws the rock is a lot more radical than a hundredth person.By the time the riot has attracted a hundred people, you don't have to be nearly as much of a daredevil or a hothead or committed or any of those things to want to engage in a riot.
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Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.
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We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability-relentl ess effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.
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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.
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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