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Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.

Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Ideas
Viruses
Like
Falsehood
Disposition
Spread
Messages
Remains
Products
Behavior
Behaviors

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.
Malcolm Gladwell
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When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Trump is an innovator who has shown how out of step the political establishment was. Which I think, probably, in the long term will be healthy. We have to figure out how to reinvigorate our political institutions and he's demonstrating to us the urgency of that task.
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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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
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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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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
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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
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Radio stations have constructed a narrow door[way], and that's because they don't understand how complex and paradoxical our snap judgments are. It's hard to measure new songs.
Malcolm Gladwell
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I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don't affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart. (p.251)
Malcolm Gladwell
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There are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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
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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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Have you ever wondered... how religious movements get started? Usually, we think of them as a product of highly charismatic evangelists... but the spread of any new and contagious ideology also has a lot to do with the skillful use of group power.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Father: 'Anything but journalism.' I rebelled.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.
Malcolm Gladwell
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I'm a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends.
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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When it's easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent.
Malcolm Gladwell