"We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't."
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Quote collection
Malcolm Gladwell quotes (page 8 of 16)
304 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize."
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"Visionaries are limited by their visions."
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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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"An incredibly high percentage of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. That's one of the little-known facts."
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"Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, a four-volume work so dense that its readers were evenly divided between those who understood it and thought it was brilliant and those who did not understand it and thought it was brilliant."
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"I'm a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends."
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"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."
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"Since becoming a journalist, each time I engage with subjects I become more radicalized."
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"I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don't affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart. (p.251)"
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"If people disobey, don't ask what is wrong with them, ask what's wrong with their leaders."
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"Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t."
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"You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it."
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"I'm in the storytelling business, and so you're always drawn to the unusual. And early on, I discovered that's the easiest way to tell stories... If you come up through a newspaper as I did, your whole goal is to get a story on the front page, and you only get something on the front page if it's unusual."
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"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."
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"To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fisher got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what's ten years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness."
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"The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication."
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"Now I basically just read spy stories because they're about solving a puzzle within the constraints of history. It's the tick tock, the clockwork that I'm interested in."
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"Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise. Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise."
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"We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating.They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen."
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