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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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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Years
Table
Twenty
Tables
Twenties
Genius
Working
Sometimes
Emerges
Thing
Kitchen

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

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If you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.
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I'm totally engaging in cultural stereotyping, no question about it. But I think it's OK because I'm doing it for a reason, for a good reason.
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Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there's feedback.
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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.
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If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.
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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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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.
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It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience experience leads to proficiency and the more proficient you are the more valuable you'll be.
Malcolm Gladwell
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That fundamentally undermines your ability to access the best part of your instincts. So my advice to those people would be stop thinking and introspecting so much and do a little more acting.
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understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.
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.
Malcolm Gladwell
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In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.
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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My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.
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
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Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise. Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise.
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People don't rise from nothing.
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Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.
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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?
Malcolm Gladwell
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Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.
Malcolm Gladwell