Quotes from Malcolm Gladwell

if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition

Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

But in the end it comes down to a matter of respect, and the simplest way that respect is communicated is through tone of voice, and the most corsive tone of voice that a doctor can assume is a dominant tone. 

Some pretend to be rich, yet have nothing; others pretend to be poor, yet have great wealth.

To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish.

The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up.

We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit. But there's nothing in any of the histories we've looked at so far to suggest things are that simple. These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society. Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up.

Extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity.

But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine.

No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

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.

You master mathematics if you are willing to try. That's what Schoenfeld attempts to teach his students.

Flom had the same experience...He didn't triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.

Working really hard is what successful people do, and the genius of the culture formed in the rice paddies is that hard work gave those in the fields a way to find meaning in the midst of great uncertainty and poverty.

our power of thin-slicing and snap judgment are extraordinary.but even the giant computer in our unconscious need a moment to do its work.

We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight

We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we're well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding.

I think when one's working, one works between absolute confidence and absolute doubt, and I got a huge dallop of each.

All war is absurd. For thousands of years, human beings have chosen to settle their differences by obliterating one another. And when we are not obliterating one another, we spend an enormous amount of time and attention coming up with better ways to obliterate one another the next time around. It's all a little strange, if you think about it.

as it may be—matters. How you feel about your abilities—your academic "self-concept"—in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It's a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.

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're really like to be.

capitalization learning": we get good at something by building on the strengths that we are naturally given.

Happiness, in one sense, is a function of how closely our world conforms to the infinite variety of human preference.