Quote

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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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Opportunity
Seemed
Underdog
Often
Fail
Enlightening
Facts
Changes
Unthinkable
Might
Appreciate
Opens
Way
Failing
Permit
Things
Doors
Creates
People
Ways
Opportunities
Enlightens
Fact
Otherwise
Permits

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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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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Flom had the same experience...He didn't triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.
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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.
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Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.
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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.
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When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.
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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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Track is full of the absolute nicest and most polite athletes in all of sports, and where does it get us?
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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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If you look at the careers of great entrepreneurs and you look at the moment they took their plunge, the plunge is rarely a great financial or material risk, it’s a social risk. At the moment they started their new businesses, everyone around them said ‘you’re an idiot’.
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Asian culture has a profoundly different relationship to work. It rewards people who are persistent.
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The people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
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If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.
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.
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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.
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People don't rise from nothing.
Malcolm Gladwell
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You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.
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Six degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.
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To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.
Malcolm Gladwell
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being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience
Malcolm Gladwell