“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.” WorldKindProblemLawDifficultPowerfulCasesDefinitionsSolvePhrasesFascinatingExceptionOne Of A KindBad Laws Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“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.” IfsKindGivenLevelsNumbersApproachMessagesHungerConsumersThresholdNew Approach Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“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.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldKindIdeasSolutionsMarketingComes And GoesLatches Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“I became convinced that knowing lots of people was kind of skill, something that the diligent can overcome.” PeopleKindKnowingSkillsOvercomingConvincedDiligent Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“We have the kind of self-made-man myth, which says that super-successful people did it themselves.” PeopleMenKindMadeSelfSuccessfulMythSuccessful PeopleSelf MadeSelf Made Man Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly ten years, if you think about four hours a day.” IfsThinkingYearsLooksKindHoursPracticeFourFieldsTenComplexesPatternsBe GoodChessConsistentPlaying ChessNeurosurgeons Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“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.” ThinkingYearsKindBookUsedStarsSportsChallengesMemoriesTelevisionAthleteUsed To BeVarietyGenerousGenesAthleticsProfessional AthleteAll StarsDecathlon Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“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.” IfsWorldKindPersonsDifferentReadingSportsLevelsClassOne ThingCapableAthleteDefinitionsGenesCompetingAbnormalWorld ClassOutliers Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“I write my books to challenge my own feelings and theories. Perhaps most surprising was what I learned about rice farming. It was really interesting to think of how different Asian and Western cultures are as a result of the kinds of agricultural practices that our ancestors used for thousands of years. The life of a Chinese peasant in the Middle Ages was so dramatically different from the life of a European peasant - night and day different.” ThinkingWritingYearsKindBookDifferentFeelingsAgeUsedNightCultureChallengesMy OwnInterestingResultsPracticeMiddleTheoryWesternChineseAncestorSurprisingAsianFarmingMiddle AgesRicePeasantsReally InterestingWestern Culture Author: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.” WantFeelsFirstsKindPersonsTwoBookMotivationMy OwnLevelsSeeingLuckyUnconsciousPhenomenonPersonal MotivationLucky Person Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“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.” PeopleWayWritingKindBreakNarrativeCheatingFundamentalist Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“The religious paradigm and the science fiction paradigm are different. Apologies to science fiction fans, but the paradigm there is to create a new world and describe it with a kind of specificity that we describe the world we inhabit. Religiosity, on the other hand, does none of that.” WorldKindDoeDifferentHandsReligiousFictionFansScience FictionNew WorldApologyParadigmSpecificity Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.” PeopleWantKindSuccessBehindsSucceedLogicAskingExplanationConvinceOutliers Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.” YearsKindOpportunityGivenResultsAttentionBreakPracticeSuccessfulRichTeachingSpecialStudentsTenTaxesAdvantageNineCoachingTax BreaksSociologistsOutliersBest StudentsBest Teaching Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.” IfsKindDoeHardMotivationalBusinessWifeHard WorkPrisonSentencesOutliers Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.” KindOpportunityGivenSuccessfulSpecialTipping PointSociologistsOutliers Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. the internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency.” KindIdeasInformationSourceInternetConnectionsNew IdeasEfficiencyAcquaintanceExploitsMarvellous Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“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.” PeopleKindSocialAnswersParticularDependentInvolvementEpidemicsTippingTipping Point Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.” KindCausesRiskCommunicationManagementErrorsPlanesTeamworkCrashRisk ManagementPlane Crashes Book:Outliers: The Story of Success Source: Outliers: The Story of Success
“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.” PeopleKindEndsFacesBeliefSuccessfulBehaviorEpidemicsBedrockImpetus Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.” KindProblemLeadershipEffortAmountCostBandSolutionsAidsMinimumTipping PointBand AidEffort And Time Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“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.” PeopleKindReadingOpportunitySittingBusyCoffeeLike MeMake SenseShopsOrganizeSitting AroundCoffee Shop Author:Malcolm Gladwell
“So, it's a very, you know - maybe we're wrong in - you know, we go around thinking the innovator is the person who's first to kind of conceive of something. And maybe the innovation process continues down the line to the second and the third and the fourth entrant into a field.” ThinkingKnowsFirstsKindPersonsProcessLinesFieldsThirdsInnovationFourthInnovators Author:Malcolm Gladwell
