Quotes from Malcolm Gladwell

captures this poignancy in his memoir, which was published in 1942. He called it The Happiest Man. After numerous chapters brimming with optimism and cheer, the book ends with the sobering reality of Nazi-dominated Europe. Had The Happiest Man been published in 1945, when the

The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over

One of the main reasons college professors accept a lower paycheck than they could get in private industry is that university life gives them the freedom to do what they want to do and what they feel is right. Langan has Harvard backwards.

self-consciousness is the enemy of "interestingness.

Biologists often talk about the "ecology" of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured.

away from or classed differently from a main or related body 2: a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample 1.

And the Beatles didn't recoil in horror when they were told they had to play eight hours a night, seven days a week. They jumped at the chance. Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.

And do you know who wrote much of the software that allows you to access the Internet? Bill Joy.

the actual experience of the thing that was feared is a lot less scary than the person imagined.

The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage

We talk a lot here about grit and self-control. The kids know what those words mean

What happens to true believers when their convictions are confronted by reality?

The first is that much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of these kinds of lopsided conflicts, because the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty. And second, that we consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong.

Human Rights Watch: "Nationwide, the rate of drug admissions to state prison for black men is thirteen times greater than the rate for white men. In ten states black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at rates that are 26 to 57 times greater than those of white men in the same state. In Illinois, for example, the state with the highest rate of black male drug offender admissions to prison, a black man is 57 times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than a white man.

You're in a situation where you have two very important responsibilities that both have a deadline that is impossible to meet. You cannot accomplish both. How do you handle that situation?

It is easier and far more satisfying to retreat and compose yourself after every score—and execute perfectly choreographed plays—than to swarm about, arms flailing, and contest every inch of the basketball court. Underdog strategies

The striking thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals," musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time

They believed that it was a mistake to separate product development from marketing, as most of their contemporaries did, because to them the two were indistinguishable: the object that sold best was the one that sold itself.

Just as Tom Gau could, through the persuasive force of his personality, serve as a Tipping Point in a word-of-mouth epidemic, the people who die in highly publicized suicides-whose deaths give others permission to die-serve as the Tipping Points in suicide epidemics.

It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and the damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish.

He was an underdog and a misfit, and that gave him the freedom to try things no one else even dreamt of.

When people are in a group, in other words, responsibility for acting is diffused.

it takes only the smallest of changes to shatter an epidemic's equilibrium.

Popeils had been doing for most of the century, and what all the experts said couldn't be done in the modern economy. He dreamed up something new in his kitchen and went out and pitched it himself.