Quote

Happiness, in one sense, is a function of how closely our world conforms to the infinite variety of human preference.

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
Happiness
Sense
Conforms
Human
Preference
Humans
Conform
World
Closely
Variety
Function
Infinite

More quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

Image
The answer is that the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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
Image
It's very hard to find someone who's successful and dislikes what they do.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
It's as if you were interested in fashion and your neighbor when you were growing up happened to be Giorgio Armani.
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
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
Image
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
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
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
Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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
Image
Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
Of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs.
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
Occasions when you can change your mind should be cherished, because they mean you're smarter than you were before.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there's feedback.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.
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
When it's easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent.
Malcolm Gladwell
Image
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