
Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.

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.

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.

Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from.

Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

It's not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

...If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)

Achievement is talent plus preparation

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

..... it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.

To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.

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

In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.

Emotion is contagious.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. (150)

We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions . . . by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.

If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.

When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.

Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation

My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

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

Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.

We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.

Arousal leaves us mind-blind.

Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.

There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.

We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.

The 10,000hr rule is a definite key in success

Working really hard is what successful people do...

Being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience

You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.

You can’t concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What’s gonna happen if it doesn’t go right?

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

...mediocre people find their way into positions of authority...because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.

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

No one-not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses-ever makes it alone

Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification—then you learn to value it differently.

Understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.

We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.

Extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.

The world we could have is so much richer than the world we have settled for.

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.

If we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition

You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not, With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.

The excessive use of force creates legitimacy problems, and force without legitimacy leads to defiance, not submission.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?

... they were not really afraid. They were just afraid of being afraid.

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave.

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.

Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.

Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

Whenever we have something that we are good at--something we care about--that experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our first impressions.

The real me isn't the person I describe, no the real me is the me revealed by my actions.

We have, in short, somehow become convinced that we need to tackle the whole problem, all at once. But the truth is that we don’t. We only need to find the stickiness Tipping Points,

The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our place in history presents us with.

I think when one's working, one works between absolute confidence and absolute doubt, and I got a huge dallop of each.

To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish.

Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. the internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency.

Happiness, in one sense, is a function of how closely our world conforms to the infinite variety of human preference.

Our power of thin-slicing and snap judgment are extraordinary.but even the giant computer in our unconscious need a moment to do its work.

Flom had the same experience...He didn't triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.

The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and have a well-developed sense of independence.

Why are man hole covers around?" If you don't knwo the answer to the questions, you're not smart enough to work at microsoft

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.

General intelligence and practical intelligence are "orthogonal": the presence of one doesn't imply the presence of the other.

No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.

Knowledge of a boy's IQ is of little help if you are faced with a formful of clever boys.

Extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity.

The principle elements of a puzzle all require the application of energy and persistence, which are the virtues of youth. Mysteries demand experience and insight.

The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage.

Words belong to the person who wrote them

An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.

. . . it is not possible to staff a large company without short people. There simply aren't enough tall people to go around.

Capitalization learning”: we get good at something by building on the strengths that we are naturally given.

All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
![[Practical intelligence is] practical in nature: that is, it's now knowledge for its own sake. It's knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/malcolm-gladwell-34053.jpg)
[Practical intelligence is] practical in nature: that is, it's now knowledge for its own sake. It's knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want.

We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight

The futility of something is not always (in love and in politics) a sufficient argument against it.

Underdog strategies are hard.

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.