Quote

Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Thinking
Audience
People
Clear
Talk
Everyone
Transparent
Write
Elegant
Writing
Nonsense
Way
Reach
Think
Universal

More quotes by 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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There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.
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If we think about emotion this way - as outside-in, not inside out - it is possible to understand how some people can have an enormous amount of influence over others. Some of us, after all, are very good at expressiing emotions and feelings, which means that we are far more emotionally contagious than the rest of us.
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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.
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When writing, you can't break physical rules. You can't have people come back from the dead. That's cheating. I am a kind of narrative fundamentalist in many ways.
Malcolm Gladwell
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In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.
Malcolm Gladwell
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The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.
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We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability-relentl ess effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.
Malcolm Gladwell
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...mediocre people find their way into positions of authority...because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.
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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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We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
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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In a country that never wins anything: in Canada, if one of our athletes so much as makes the final in a World Championship, we declare a national holiday.
Malcolm Gladwell
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People can't do much about the fate part, but we can certainly do a lot about the man part.
Malcolm Gladwell
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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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I'm a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends.
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
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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.
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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We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.
Malcolm Gladwell