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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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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Would
Attempted
Underdog
Forced
Otherwise
Trying
Things
Never

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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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.
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Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way...We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way.
Malcolm Gladwell
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What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.
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To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fisher got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what's ten years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Sometimes [genius] is just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.
Malcolm Gladwell
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Outlier are those who have been given opportunities-- -and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.
Malcolm Gladwell
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David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - The Sports Gene - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an all-star challenge on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decat
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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I don't want to be like the angry old guy in the corner who is always ranting and raving about the same things - but I don't mind doing that just a little bit!
Malcolm Gladwell
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Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.
Malcolm Gladwell
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The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.
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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Without the New York Times, there is no blog community. They'd have nothing to blog about.
Malcolm Gladwell
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If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.
Malcolm Gladwell
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People are experience-rich and theory-poor.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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.
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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Flom had the same experience...He didn't triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.
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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There’s this powerful phrase in the legal world, “Difficult cases make bad law.” The exception is the difficult case. You can’t generalize them by definition. So although they are fascinating, they don’t solve any problem because they’re so one of a kind.
Malcolm Gladwell