Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (b.1963) is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996, Gladwell is celebrated for his unique perspectives on contemporary society. His phenomenal bestsellers have helped shape 21st-century culture.
Born in Fareham, Hampshire, England, Gladwell got a bachelor’s degree in history from Trinity College, University of Ontario. He moved to the U.S. and worked for The American Spectator 1984–85, as a freelancer, as a business and science writer for the Washington Post 1987–96, before joining The New Yorker in 1996.
Gladwell has published six books, including the bestsellers The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000;) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005;) Outliers: The Story of Success (2008.) Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know (2019) focused on assumptions and mistakes people make when communicating with strangers and how the consequences of such interactions can be transformative.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Malcolm Gladwell
Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head.
—Malcolm Gladwell
The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.
—Malcolm Gladwell
What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.
—Malcolm Gladwell
We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.
—Malcolm Gladwell
If you make a great number of predictions, the ones that were wrong will soon be forgotten, and the ones that turn out to be true will make you famous.
—Malcolm Gladwell
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
—Malcolm Gladwell
Topics: Passion
It’s those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.
—Malcolm Gladwell
Criticism is a privilege that you earn—it shouldn’t be your opening move in an interaction.
—Malcolm Gladwell
Topics: Criticism
Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend- or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet- understands this implicitly; you can learn as much – or more – from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.
—Malcolm Gladwell
People are experience rich but theory poor. My books are a way to organize experience. People see that as useful in this day and age.
—Malcolm Gladwell
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