It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values. Malcolm Gladwell More Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell More Quotes From Malcolm Gladwell I should point out that I have a picture of Asbel Kiprop as the screensaver on my phone. Is that embarrassing? Malcolm Gladwell embarrassingphonesshould If there is one thing I learned by reading Epstein's "The Sports Gene" it is that world-class athletes are, by definition, abnormal: that is, the kind of person capable of competing at that level is necessarily very different from the rest of us physiologically. They are outliers. Malcolm Gladwell readingathletesports When crime drops dramatically in New York for no apparent reason, or when a movie made on a shoestring budget ends up making hundreds of millions of dollars - we're surprised. I'm saying, don't be surprised. This is the way social epidemics work. Malcolm Gladwell epidemicsdollarsnew-york The sad thing about doping is how much it obscures our appreciation of greatness. Malcolm Gladwell dopinggreatnessappreciation Instead of thinking about talent as something that you acquire, talent should be thought of as something that you develop. Malcolm Gladwell talentshouldthinking 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 giving-uprunningkids People at CDC [Centers for Disease Control] who cut their teeth on diseases over the last 10 years have started to think of crime as another disease, and using some of these same concepts. It was something that was in the air in that world, but it was time to bust it out and apply it to any number of different social epidemics. Malcolm Gladwell cuttingyearsthinking We have the kind of self-made-man myth, which says that super-successful people did it themselves. Malcolm Gladwell successfulselfmen 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 rockswantpeople I think actually the marketing community is approaching a crisis: There are just too many messages competing for too little attention. That is the fundamental problem. Malcolm Gladwell marketingcommunitythinking Jenny Simpson loses her shoe in the women's fifteen hundred, with a lap and a half to go, destroying her chances to repeat as world champion, and she gives the most gracious interview afterward about how she's had a wonderful career already. Great for Jenny Simpson. Bad for the sport! We need drama! Malcolm Gladwell careerssportsdrama We are approaching levels - if we're not beyond levels - of threshold for the number of messages that consumers can take in in a given day. There is a kind of hunger for some kind of new approach to getting the word out about something. Malcolm Gladwell levelsmessagesnumbers Track is full of the absolute nicest and most polite athletes in all of sports, and where does it get us? Malcolm Gladwell trackathletesports When it's easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent. Malcolm Gladwell incentivesdevelopmentthinking I think that persistence and stubbornness and hard work are probably, at the end of the day, more important than the willingness to take a risk. Malcolm Gladwell persistencehard-workthinking I don't go to an office, so I write at home. I like to write in the morning, if possible; that's when my mind is freshest. I might write for a couple of hours, and then I head out to have lunch and read the paper. Then I write for a little bit longer if I can, then probably go to the library or make some phone calls. Every day is a little bit different. I'm not highly routinized, so I spend a lot of time wandering around New York City with my laptop in my bag, wondering where I'm going to end up next. It's a fairly idyllic life for someone who likes writing. Malcolm Gladwell couplenew-yorkmorning We spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out who's going to be a good NFL quarterback, and we do a very bad job of it. We don't really know. And we also spend a lot of time trying to figure out who will be a good teacher, and we're really bad at that too. We don't know if someone is going to be a good teacher when they start teaching. So what should we do in those situations in which predictions are useless? Malcolm Gladwell teachingteacherjobs There's no idea that can't be explained to a thoughtful 14-year-old. If the thoughtful 14-year-old doesn't get it, it is your fault, not the 14-year-old's. Malcolm Gladwell thoughtfulyearsideas My highest compliment is when someone comes up to me to say, "My 14-year-old daughter, or my 12-year-old son read your book and loved it." I cannot conceive of a greater compliment than that - to write something that as an adult I find satisfying, but also that manages to reach a curious 13- or 14-year-old. Malcolm Gladwell daughterwritingbook 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 thoughtfulmotherwriting
