37 Inspirational Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

The Outliers, Blink, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, as well as many in-depth articles for The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Every book Gladwell has written made it onto The New York Times Best Seller list. That’s a hell of an achievement for a journalist who doesn’t write about books.

You’ll find out that almost anything is possible if you have the right amount of dedication and focus.

37 Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

1. Practice is not the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.

People want a sense of autonomy and a connection between their efforts and rewards. The first thing that will reduce your enjoyment in your work is the lack of autonomy.
The second thing that will decrease your enjoyment in your work are tasks that are too complex.
Both of these things are related to the first three things listed, because they will decrease your autonomy.

You have to be deliberate and make decisions deliberately or your decision-making will be instinctive.

I would say that hard work is a prison sentence if you are not given the freedom to do it as much as you like and you don’t get the recognition for your hard work.

People who live in different cultures are different people. For example, it is not uncommon for some people to be born in the U.S. and come to love food from a different culture, like Italian or Mexican food, or to have a German wife and Italian mother-in-law.

Some advantages are material and some are not, and the reason underdogs win so often is because sometimes their material advantages are equal to (or better than) their material advantages of the opponent.

The moral of this story: if you’re at the bottom of a hierarchy, the only way you’re ever going to make it is to work yourself UP to the higher levels.

And by doing this, you can be at the top of the hierarchy more often than you’d like.

This quote is also from Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell talks about how repetition builds trust, which is a good way of building a brand. It is especially good if the repetition is from a trusted source, as opposed to some random person. Another great thing about this quote is that Gladwell says repetition can help you and that you can do it without even realizing it.

9th of 37 Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

In order to learn anything, one must first find a way to experience it. We learn by example and by direct experience through real-world events.

Wealthy and poor people both pretend, but it’s not like that. Wealthy people pretend to be poor, but they have a lot more. Rich people pretend to be rich, but they don’t pretend to have anything. They just have it.

It matters who you are in society. If you look at those who are already rich, then they get more government aid and more preferential treatment. It’s the same with the education system. Some are given better educations because these people are already privileged and rich.

In the case of social inequality, the rich and the wealthy get preferential treatment.

Achieving results is a combination of talent and preparation.

In real life, the things that we see, hear, or smell influence us and in turn affect our experiences. Therefore, we are able to change our first impressions through new experiences.

The process of first impression is so impactful that we often spend an enormous effort to change something that is unfavorable to us. We could have the best life ever, but if we don’t get the job, then that is our life, until we change the first impression we have of that job.

In life, you will have numerous situations, when you cannot change your experience or first impression, but you can change the results.

The same way that you might become fluent in a language, you might become fluent in a specific set of habits, or to put it more positively, it might be an act of becoming to be fluent in the language of habits – you’re not going to go from being a “bad boy” or someone who “doesn’t have time” to a “kinda cool guy” overnight. When it comes to habits, you can either try to change them or you can change your perspective on them.

IQ is a measure of innate ability, but it’s an incomplete measure of innate ability. IQ is often used for things like measuring academic achievement; however, IQ is only partially correlated with academic achievement. Social savvy, as well as many other useful skills, has to be learned and it comes from our families. Social savvy has to come from somewhere.

16th of 37 Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

Extraordinary achievement starts with opportunities. Talent is just required to take advantage of the opportunities.

I’m a big fan of self reliance. I think it is the greatest virtue of all. Without it you’ll never make it.

When we think about the use of either intuitive or analytic thinking, neither is bad or good. What is bad is to use either in the wrong circumstance.

Being a teacher is meaningful. It is not as important and rewarding as it may seem from outside the classroom. It is more rewarding to be a teacher if it is fulfilling.

The number of hours worked by a person does not cause his or her family to be wealthy.

21st of 37 Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

I think that you can define success as a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

There are many ways in which a person, with or without advantages, can be better off. We tend to focus on how those kinds of material advantages allow you to get into certain kinds of schools that give you opportunities to get into prestigious companies and jobs, and that makes you better off in terms of wealth and status… we don’t spend enough time thinking about how these material advantages can actually limit your options.

I was raised by a single mother, and although I would’ve loved to have had a father figure in my life, I’ve always felt like I got to be the parent for my five siblings, and my uncles and aunts. I was the one who was expected to carry on the family name, so I set out to be the best person I could be.

Improvisers are extremely skilled at suppression. They learn to avoid doing things because it may not be easy to do and other people will laugh at them. However, the people who can do the best improvisation are those who are able to develop action.

When I see patients I do my best to find out what their needs are and try to meet those needs in the best possible way. I don’t think about the business aspect of running a practice because I feel this is no longer my profession. I’m happy to spend extra time with patients in order to make sure they are satisfied with the care they receive.

Malcolm Gladwell says that if we work hard enough, and we really want it bad enough, we can shape the world to our desires.

You can be an amazing friend, partner, partner, or even best friend to someone else, but if you’re not doing it for them, it is not enough. You have to do it for yourself too.

Success is not about how much money you make, it is about having what you want and you want to have a good life, a good relationship, and a good job.
I used a lot of quotes from “Failure is Not an Option.” This one really helped me a lot to get focused. I have read the book before but this time I was more focused on what I really wanted and how I can achieve what I want.

As a writer, you should read your work a lot. You don’t need to do it every single day, but every few days, and every time you find a mistake in your work, it will force you to re-think the writing.

I think this quote is great! It shows that in contrast to the idea that children of poverty are often neglected, there is a very good reason for it. They are creative!

31st of 37 Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

_______________ the only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart.

When something needs to be learned, it is usually best to learn it thoroughly, so that everything else can be learned more easily and quickly.

Making decisions is hard and understanding is much easier. In order to make good decisions, we must be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.

We need to understand where people come from so that we can understand how they arrived to the places they are in life. This will help us understand what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.

I think Malcolm Gladwell has a great point about how basketball is all about practice. Basketball is probably one of the most skill based sports and therefore the more repetitive and structured practice you put into it, the better you’ll be once you go on the court. I like how he makes this point about spontaneity in basketball. I also think it’s interesting that he says that this type of practice makes up 50% of the basketball game!

The world that we could have is so much richer than the world that we had settled for.

We are the “super-rich” who have taken advantage of the opportunities that have been given to you or come from your circumstances. This is why the “middle class” is the largest in the world.

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