Malcolm Gladwell Quotes
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You don't want to be first, right? You want to be second or third. You don't want to be - Facebook is not the first in social media. They're the third, right? Similarly, you know, if you look at Steve Jobs' history, he's never been first.
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I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.
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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.
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The underdog winning is the romantic position.
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If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: You're not the audience!
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We all assume that if you're weak and poor, you're never going to win. In fact, the real world is full of examples where the exact opposite happens, where the weak win and the strong screw up.
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You think it matters to the kids whether they're learning to play on a Steinway or a normal piano?
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The paradox of endurance sports is that an athlete can never work as hard as he wants, because if he pushes himself too far, his hematocrit will fall.
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Part of me thinks that innovation, real innovation in health care delivery, needs to happen from the bottom to the top.
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A handicap is like trying to race and you have a ten pound weight stuck to your waist. That is a handicap.
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If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money.
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I never had those dreams of making the Olympics. Never.
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If you're last in your class at Harvard, it doesn't feel like you're a good student, even though you really are. It's not smart for everyone to want to go to a great school.
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I don't golf. I've never golfed. I will never golf.
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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.
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All three of the great waves of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America innovated.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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The most common form of giantism is a condition called acromegaly, and acromegaly is caused by a benign tumor on your pituitary gland that causes an overproduction of human growth hormone. And throughout history, many of the most famous giants have all had acromegaly.
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Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community.
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Do you remember the wrestler Andre the Giant? Famous. He had acromegaly.
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I don't understand, given the constraints physicians have in doing their job and the paperwork demanded of them, why people want to be physicians. I think we've made it very, very difficult for them to perform their job. I think that's a shame.