The collection / 69 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

69 results · Page 2 of 3Play this collection ▷

01c. 1963 AD

Emotion goes inside-out. Emotional contagion, though, suggests that the opposite is also true. If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad. Emotion, in this sense, goes outside-in.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

02c. 1963 AD

I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don't affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart. (p.251)

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

03c. 1963 AD

Living a long life, the conventional wisdom at the time said, depended to a great extent on who we were—that is, our genes. It depended on the decisions we made—on what we chose to eat, and how much we chose to exercise, and how effectively we were treated by the medical system. No one was used to thinking about health in terms of community.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

04c. 1963 AD

We form our impression not globally, by placing ourselves in the broadest possible context, but locally, by comparing ourselves to people in the same boat as ourselves.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

05c. 1963 AD

[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

06c. 1963 AD

The notion that the only way you can critically engage with a person’s ideas is to take a shot at them, is to be openly critical — this is actually nonsense. Some of the most effective ways in which you deal with someone’s idea are to treat them completely at face value, and with an enormous amount of respect. That’s actually a faster way to engage with what they’re getting at than to lob grenades in their direction…If you’re going to hold someone to what they believe, make sure you accurately represent what they believe.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

07c. 1963 AD

If you are a white person who would like to treat black people as equals in every way—who would like to have a set of associations with blacks that are as positive as those that you have with whites—it requires more than a simple commitment to equality. It requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when you want to meet, hire, date, or talk with a member of a minority, you aren’t betrayed by your hesitation and discomfort. Taking rapid cognition seriously--acknowledging the incredible power, for good and ill, that first impression play in our lives--requires that we take active steps to manage and control those impressions.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

08c. 1963 AD

For every remote miss who becomes stronger, there are countless near misses who are crushed by what they have been through. There are times and places, however, when all of us depend on people who have been hardened by their experiences.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

09c. 1963 AD

Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

10c. 1963 AD

For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question that most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do – the innately talented ones. Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger role preparation seems to play.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

11c. 1963 AD

Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action."(p.115)

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

12c. 1963 AD

To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success...with a society that provides opportunities for all.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

13c. 1963 AD

Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

14c. 1963 AD

Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

15c. 1963 AD

Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. . . . spontaneity isn't random.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

16c. 1963 AD

Much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of (these) one-sided conflicts. Because the act of facing overwhelming odds, produces greatness and beauty.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

17c. 1963 AD

Six degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

18c. 1963 AD

The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

19c. 1963 AD

In the six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

20c. 1963 AD

Testers for 7-Up consistently found consumers would report more lemon flavor in their product if they added 15% more yellow coloring TO THE PACKAGE.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

21c. 1963 AD

That's like being a hockey player born on January I.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

22c. 1963 AD

Some people look like they sound better than they actually sound, because they look confident and have good posture," once musician, a veteran of many auditions, says. "Other people look awful when they play but sound great. Other people have that belabored look when they play, but you can't hear it in the sound. There is always this dissonance between what you see and hear" (p.251).

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

23c. 1963 AD

In the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among my CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗

24c. 1963 AD

Do we as a society need people who have emerged from some kind of trauma. And the answer is that we plainly do. There are times and places however when all of us depend on people who have been hardened by their experiences. ... [Dr. Freireich] understood from his own childhood experiences that it is possible to emerge from even the darkest hell healed and restored.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

↗