Malcolm Gladwell quotes Best Collection

• If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: You Gift Listening Reading
• Countless religious innovators over the years have played the game of establishing an identity for themselves by accentuating their otherness.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Game Identity Over Religious
• People assume when my hair is long that I am a lot cooler than I actually am. I am not opposed to this misconception, by the way, but it is a misconception.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Long People I Am Hair
• There is an important idea in psychology: The 'just world theory,' which says that it is very important for us to convince ourselves that the world is just and things happen for a reason. That there is some elemental fairness in everything, which creates the illusion of justice.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Justice World Illusion Important
• The two contemporary writers whom I consider as role models are Janet Malcolm and Michael Lewis.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Two Role Whom Role Models
• If I was President of the United States, I'd rather be right than interesting. If I was CEO of a company, I'd rather be right than interesting. But I'm a journalist - what journalist would rather be right than interesting?

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Right Company Interesting Rather
• A runner needs not just to be skinny but - more specifically - to have skinny calves and ankles, because every extra pound carried on your extremities costs more than a pound carried on your torso. That's why shaving even a few ounces off a pair of running shoes can have a significant effect.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Shoes Skinny Shaving More
• If you're skinny and you can't play hockey in Canada, you aren't left with a lot of options. I was left with running.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: You Skinny Play Hockey
• Shallow communities are relatively easy to build.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Easy Shallow Relatively Communities
• Books about spies and traitors - and the congressional hearings that follow the exposure of traitors - generally assume that false-negative errors are much worse than false-positive errors.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Follow Traitors About Worse
• If you're smarter than me, you shouldn't be reading my books.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Me You Reading Than
• All my books are optimistic!

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Optimistic
• My mother read me biblical stories at night.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Me Night Mother Read
• I don't want a door bell. I don't want anyone ringing my door bell... seems to be intrusive. They can call me on their cell phones.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Me Door Want Phones
• It is useful to compare the Branch Davidians with the Mormons of the mid-nineteenth century. The Mormons were vilified in those years in large part because Joseph Smith believed in polygamy.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Useful Compare Large Because
• In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: You Bible Country More
• I remember as a kid watching one of the Olympic games, and I was cheering for a big track athlete. He was the favorite to win, and he lost. I realized in that moment the pain he felt was so much greater than the pain that those who never thought they were going to win would have felt had they lost.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Moment Pain Remember Never
• A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Beautiful Struggle World About Most
• If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can't need social approval to go forward. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing?

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: You Go Value Doing
• The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: People Doors Underdog Things
• We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Always Know First Impressions First
• For some small number of people, a parental loss appears to be, ultimately, a desirable difficulty - again, not a large number.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: People Loss Small Difficulty
• If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: You're not the audience!

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: You Audience Books Read
• When people from organizations like the World Bank descended on Third World countries, they always tried to remove obstacles to development, to reduce economic anxiety and uncertainty.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: World People Uncertainty Obstacles
• From medieval tapestries, we know that slingers were capable of hitting birds in flight. They were incredibly accurate.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Know Birds Flight Capable
• I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research... for ways of augmenting story-telling.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Look I Am Research Ways
• An aggressive drug-testing program would cut down on certain abuses, but its never going to catch everyone - or even close to everyone.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Never Down Everyone Aggressive
• I'm a lot more interested in people than I used to be. I used to be most interested in abstract ideas, and people were an afterthought, but that's changed a bit.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: People Ideas More Most
• In cross-country skiing, athletes propel themselves over distances of ten and twenty miles - a physical challenge that places intense demands on the ability of their red blood cells to deliver oxygen to their muscles.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Red Challenge Blood Oxygen
• 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.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Topics: Long You Way Think