Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

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Malcolm Gladwell

Profession : Author

Birth : September 3, 1963

What do we tell our children? Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover. We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation.

Malcolm Gladwell

My mother read me biblical stories at night.

Malcolm Gladwell

Take the great example of the four-minute mile. One guy breaks it, then all of a sudden everyone breaks it. And they break it in such a short period of time that it can't be because they were training harder. It's purely that it was a psychological barrier, and someone had to show them that they could do it.

Malcolm Gladwell

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

I don't golf. I've never golfed. I will never golf.

Malcolm Gladwell

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

I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.

Malcolm Gladwell

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

If you go to an elite school where the other students in your class are all really brilliant, you run the risk of mistakenly believing yourself to not be a good student.

Malcolm Gladwell

Many people with dyslexia truly suffer, and their lives are worse off for having had that disability.

Malcolm Gladwell

From medieval tapestries, we know that slingers were capable of hitting birds in flight. They were incredibly accurate.

Malcolm Gladwell

The best example of how impossible it will be for Major League Baseball to crack down on steroids is the fact that baseball and the media are still talking about the problem as 'steroids.'

Malcolm Gladwell

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

So, it's a very, you know - maybe we're wrong in - you know, we go around thinking the innovator is the person who's first to kind of conceive of something. And maybe the innovation process continues down the line to the second and the third and the fourth entrant into a field.

Malcolm Gladwell

Of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs.

Malcolm Gladwell

There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.

Malcolm Gladwell

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

Malcolm Gladwell

The great accomplishment of Jobs's life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies - his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness - in the service of perfection.

Malcolm Gladwell

My books have contradictions all the time - and people are fine with that.

Malcolm Gladwell

You think it matters to the kids whether they're learning to play on a Steinway or a normal piano?

Malcolm Gladwell