Criticism is a privilege that you earn—it shouldn’t be your opening move in an interaction.
—Malcolm Gladwell
Topics: Criticism
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
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
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
It’s those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.
—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
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
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
—Malcolm Gladwell
Topics: Passion
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
What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.
—Malcolm Gladwell
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Neil Gaiman British Writer
Dennis Potter English Dramatist
Raymond Chandler American Novelist
Anthony Burgess English Novelist, Critic
Oliver Sacks British Neurologist, Writer
W. H. Auden British-born American Poet
Freeman Dyson American Physicist, Author
Joan Collins English Actress
David Hockney British Artist
Jeanette Winterson English Novelist