"There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess."
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Quote collection
Malcolm Gladwell quotes (page 9 of 16)
304 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There are some people, who I'll charitably call snobs, who are dismissive of any conversation that doesn't begin with the full level of complexity. That's just not how the world works."
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"I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite."
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"Every cop will tell you that their real job is being a social worker. That's what they do all day. The large majority of police officers in this country never even draw their gun, let alone fire it. They do conflict resolution, right? And if that's their job, why do they need to look like they're an occupying force?"
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"What interests me about fiction is plot. And what interests me about plot is whether someone tells a story that moves me within the constraints of storytelling. And I have narrowly defined storytelling."
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"Success is not a function of individual talent. It's the steady accumulation of advantages. It's bound up in so many other broader circumstantial, environmental, historical, and cultural factors."
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"Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be."
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"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."
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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."
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"If you're in business it's both a promise and a warning. It says that sometimes little things can cause some little guy to have an overnight success."
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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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"Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time."
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"Change your mind about something significant every day."
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"Sometimes [genius] is just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table."
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"Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time."
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"The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence." To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for for maximum effect."
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"Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer."
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"It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values."
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"I have a new way of doing things, and I don’t care if you think I’m crazy."
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"Instead of thinking about talent as something that you acquire, talent should be thought of as something that you develop."
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