Quote

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

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
Experience
Instinct
Firsts
Gift
First
Judging
Good
Judgment
Aren
Question
Instincts
Asks
Basis
Making
Bases

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

Image
Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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.
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
Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because, that's the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.
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
Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
Track is full of the absolute nicest and most polite athletes in all of sports, and where does it get us?
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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
Image
So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it's OK.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you think success is about so many more things and is so much more arbitrary, then you can be much more open to the idea that you can be Ben Fountain and publish your great book at forty-nine.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
People who are busy doing things - as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops -don't have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.
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
Asian culture has a profoundly different relationship to work. It rewards people who are persistent.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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