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Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.

Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Terrifies
Annoys
Incompetence
Annoying

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Those with health insurance are overinsured and their behavior is distorted by moral hazard. Those without health insurance use their own money to make decisions based on an assessment of their needs. The insured are wasteful. The uninsured are prudent. So what's the solution? Make the insured a little more like the uninsured.
Malcolm Gladwell
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The religious paradigm and the science fiction paradigm are different. Apologies to science fiction fans, but the paradigm there is to create a new world and describe it with a kind of specificity that we describe the world we inhabit. Religiosity, on the other hand, does none of that.
Malcolm Gladwell
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By shifting the balance away from the individual we open the door for the individual. Because we make it obvious that anyone can do it given the right circumstance.
Malcolm Gladwell
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People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.
Malcolm Gladwell
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We are approaching levels - if we're not beyond levels - of threshold for the number of messages that consumers can take in in a given day. There is a kind of hunger for some kind of new approach to getting the word out about something.
Malcolm Gladwell
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In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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
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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
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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.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there's feedback.
Malcolm Gladwell
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I've always been baffled by how much we over-rate the statistically insignificant differences that separate competitors at the top end of the distribution.
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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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
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Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.
Malcolm Gladwell
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if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition
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.
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.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Emotion is contagious.
Malcolm Gladwell
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When writing, you can't break physical rules. You can't have people come back from the dead. That's cheating. I am a kind of narrative fundamentalist in many ways.
Malcolm Gladwell