Quotes from Malcolm Gladwell

We all assume that if you're weak and poor, you're never going to win. In fact, the real world is full of examples where the exact opposite happens, where the weak win and the strong screw up.

Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.

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.

As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect.

An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.

Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we've done it for, I think, too long.

My books have contradictions all the time - and people are fine with that.

The sad thing about doping is how much it obscures our appreciation of greatness.

Innovation-the heart of the knowledge economy-is fundamentally social.

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.

Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community.

We should be firing bad teachers.

The great accomplishment of Jobs's life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies - his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness - in the service of perfection.

If Harvard is $60,000 and University of Toronto, where I went to school, is maybe six. So you're really telling me that education is 10 times better at Harvard than it is at University of Toronto? That seems ridiculous to me.

I'm just trying to say that it should reassure us that the inevitable traumas of being human do end up producing some good. Otherwise, the human condition is overwhelmingly depressing.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?

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.

An aggressive drug-testing program would cut down on certain abuses, but its never going to catch everyone - or even close to everyone.

Outlier are those who have been given opportunities-- -and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there's feedback.

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.