Quotes from Malcolm Gladwell

We have, I think, a very rigid and limited definition of what an advantage is. We think of things as helpful that actually aren't and think of other things as unhelpful that in reality leave us stronger and wiser. Part One of David and Goliath is an attempt to explore the consequences of that error. When we see the giant, why do we automatically assume the battle is his for the winning? And what does it take to be that person who doesn't accept the conventional order of things as a given-

leads to a church, the Madonna del Carmine—Our Lady of Mount Carmine. Narrow stone steps run

The school year in the United States is, on average, 180 days long. The South Korean school year is 220 days long. The Japanese school year is 243 days long.

The introduction to the 1 vs. 100 episode pointed out that Einstein had an IQ of 150 and Langan has an IQ of 195. Langan's IQ is 30 percent higher than Einstein's. But that doesn't mean Langan is 30 percent smarter than Einstein. That's ridiculous. All we can say is that when it comes to thinking about really hard things like physics

You know, in order to make somebody laugh, you have to be interesting, and in order to be interesting, you have to do things that are mean. Comedy comes out of anger, and interesting comes out of angry; otherwise there is no conflict. But he was able to be mean and you forgave him, and you have to be able to forgive somebody, because at the end of the day, you still have to be with him, even after he's dumped the girl or made some choices that you don't agree with.

Lots of people drink when they are feeling down because they think it will chase their troubles away. That's inhibition-thinking: alcohol will unlock my good mood. But that's plainly not what happens. Sometimes alcohol cheers us up. But at other times, when an anxious person drinks they just get more anxious. Myopia theory has an answer to that puzzle: it depends on what the anxious, drunk person is doing.

The statistics show that the Southerner who can avoid arguments and adultery is as safe as any other American, and probably safer." In the backcountry, violence wasn't for economic gain. It was personal. You fought over your honor.

To the extent that the war planners back in Washington conceived of a firebombing campaign, they thought of hitting six Japanese cities, not sixty-seven. By July, LeMay was bombing minor Japanese cities that had no strategically important industry at all—just people, living in tinderboxes.

Markopolos sees his mistake now, with the benefit of over a decade of hindsight. But in the midst of things, the same brilliant mind that was capable of unraveling Madoff's deceptions was incapable of getting people in positions of responsibility to take him seriously. That's the consequence of not defaulting to truth. If you don't begin in a state of trust, you can't have meaningful social encounters.

The thing you have to understand about that crash," Ratwatte said, "is that New York air traffic controllers are famous for being rude, aggressive, and bullying. They are also

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

what they meant by myopia is that alcohol's principal effect is to narrow our emotional and mental fields of vision. It creates, in their words, "a state of shortsightedness in which superficially understood, immediate aspects of experience have a disproportionate influence on behavior and emotion.

use as ammunition, as pendulum

It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.

Contagiousness is an unexpected property of all kinds of things.

A man employs the full power of the state in his grief and ends up plunging his government into a fruitless and costly experiment. A woman who walks away from the promise of power finds the strength to forgive - and saves her friendship, her marriage, and her sanity. The world is turned upside down. - Chapter 8

The lesson of the trickster tales is the third desirable difficulty: the unexpected freedom that comes from having nothing to lose. The trickster gets to break the rules.

there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that's worth more to most of us than money.

Why are we so squeamish? Why is the fact that each of us comes from a culture with its own distinctive mix of strengths and weaknesses, tendencies and predispositions, so difficult to acknowledge?

the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make

La región ventromedial desempeña una función crucial en la toma de decisiones. Establece contingencias y relaciones, y organiza la montaña de información que recibimos del mundo exterior para priorizar y señalar las cosas que exigen atención inmediata. Quienes sufren alguna lesión en esta zona están plenamente capacitados para el pensamiento racional y pueden ser muy inteligentes y funcionales, pero carecen de capacidad de juicio.

when the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash.

Contamos historias del tipo hecho a sí mismo porque encontramos algo encantador en la idea de una heroica lucha solitaria contra probabilidades abrumadoras.