If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing. Malcolm Gladwell More Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell More Quotes From Malcolm Gladwell I always resist seeing my own personal motivation in my work, but I guess it must be there on some level. And I do feel very much that my life follows the kinds of things I talk about in my books. I've always thought of myself as an insanely lucky person, so perhaps the success of my first two books led me to want to examine this phenomenon on some unconscious level. Malcolm Gladwell motivation two book I worry that track is going to enter into an impossibly complicated stage, where our understanding of the complexities of human physiology - and our ability to accentuate and exploit them - is going to make the notion of pure competition impossible. Malcolm Gladwell track understanding worry I don't really collect books. I tend to lose interest in them the minute I've read them, so most of the books I've read are left in airplanes and hotel rooms. Malcolm Gladwell airplane book rooms Our intuitions, as humans, aren't always very good. Changes that happen really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing. Malcolm Gladwell intuition confusing input I've always been baffled by how much we over-rate the statistically insignificant differences that separate competitors at the top end of the distribution. Malcolm Gladwell baffled differences ends 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 decathlon. Malcolm Gladwell stars sports memories People can't do much about the fate part, but we can certainly do a lot about the man part. Malcolm Gladwell fate men people I don't think people are averse to thinking about things in a deep way, but we have limited time and opportunity to think about things in a deep way. I think that's why there is an appetite for non-fiction - it gives people the opportunity to reexamine ordinary experience and be smarter about it. Malcolm Gladwell opportunity people thinking When I see someone who reads something of mine and draws something out of it that's very different from my perspective, I think that's actually cool. Sometimes it's worrisome when you feel they badly misinterpret it, but it just says that they're thinking, and they're bringing their own interpretation to bear on it. [...] That's part of the wonderful thing about putting words into the world, and if I was worried about that, I couldn't be a writer. Malcolm Gladwell perspective different thinking I recently talked to an eighteen-year-old - a huge FIFA fan - and realized that he spends more time playing the FIFA video game than he does watching actual FIFA games. Malcolm Gladwell fifa games years The nature of athletic celebrity is increasingly moving away from the actual field of play. Malcolm Gladwell athletic play moving Asian culture has a profoundly different relationship to work. It rewards people who are persistent. Malcolm Gladwell asian different people What track needs to figure out: how to engage us between the races. Instead, the entire off-the-track conversation is about doping. This is how you kill a sport. Malcolm Gladwell track race sports I'm someone who can provide an intellectual framework, but I can't tell people who are trying to sell Product X how to do that because I don't know, and I would be faking it if I attempted to step into that role. Malcolm Gladwell intellectual trying people If your parents are billionaires, that might actually be an obstacle to your own happiness and self-development. If you go to Oxford or Harvard, that might actually thwart your desire to graduate with a science or math degree. Malcolm Gladwell self oxford math 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 book ideas thinking By shifting the balance away from the individual we open the door for the individual. Because we make it obvious that anyone can do it given the right circumstance. Malcolm Gladwell shifting balance doors 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. Malcolm Gladwell stereotype reason thinking So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it's OK. Malcolm Gladwell writing long thinking Anyone who knows the marketing world knows that ideas come and go, and people latch onto things and think of them as a kind of solution. Malcolm Gladwell people ideas thinking
