The collection / 69 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1963 AD

In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very ‘gifted’ improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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02c. 1963 AD

...legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice--that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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03c. 1963 AD

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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04c. 1963 AD

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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05c. 1963 AD

That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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06c. 1963 AD

Acquaintances, in sort, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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07c. 1963 AD

It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses. If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, out of that despair rises as indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah and your eye is drawn to the man with sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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08c. 1963 AD

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.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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09c. 1963 AD

When you write about sports, you're allowed to engage in mischief. Nothing is at stake.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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10c. 1963 AD

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.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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11c. 1963 AD

Do you remember the wrestler Andre the Giant? Famous. He had acromegaly.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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12c. 1963 AD

There is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we've been. That brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in academia and never sees the light of day.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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13c. 1963 AD

You don't train someone for all of those years of medical school and residency, particularly people who want to help others optimize their physical and psychological health, and then have them run a claims-processing operation for insurance companies.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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14c. 1963 AD

I have profoundly mixed feelings about the Affordable Care Act. What I love about it is its impulse. It attempts to deal with this intractable problem in American health care life, which is that a significant portion of the population does not have access to quality medical care.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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15c. 1963 AD

When I go to my health club, and it's in the basement, you have to take the elevator down. And this drives me crazy. Why can't there be a stairway? At least make it as easy to exercise as it is to not exercise. It's in society's interest for me to take the stairs.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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16c. 1963 AD

Part of me thinks that innovation, real innovation in health care delivery, needs to happen from the bottom to the top.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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17c. 1963 AD

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.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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18c. 1963 AD

The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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19c. 1963 AD

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 / quote

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20c. 1963 AD

The underdog winning is the romantic position.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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21c. 1963 AD

The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.

Malcolm Gladwell / quote

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