Top 450 Malcolm Gladwell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

Featured in: Excellence Quotes, Preparation Quotes, Practice Quotes, Quotes About Skills

2. “It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you’ll be.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

3. “If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

4. “Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there’s feedback.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

Featured in: Performance Quotes, Preparation Quotes, Practice Quotes, Quotes About Skills

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

6. “Working really hard is what successful people do...”

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

Featured in: Influence Quotes

8. “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

9. “Through embracing the diversity of humans beings, we will find a sure way to true happiness.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

10. “Innovation-the heart of the knowledge economy-is fundamentally social.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

12. “The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

13. “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

14. “The people at the top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

15. “People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

16. “A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

18. “Outlier are those who have been given opportunities – -and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

19. “I have a new way of doing things, and I don’t care if you think I’m crazy.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

20. “If people disobey, don’t ask what is wrong with them, ask what’s wrong with their leaders.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

23. “Achievement is talent plus preparation.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

25. “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

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

27. “Illegitimi non carborundum. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

29. “If you don’t contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you’re not thinking.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

30. “The difference isn’t resources, it’s attitude.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

31. “The power of positive thinking will overcome so many things.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

32. “The sad thing about doping is how much it obscures our appreciation of greatness.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

33. “The point about Connectors is that by having a foot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

34. “A radical and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge convention.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

35. “If you’re in business it’s both a promise and a warning. It says that sometimes little things can cause some little guy to have an overnight success.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

36. “We have the kind of self-made-man myth, which says that super-successful people did it themselves.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

37. “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.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

38. “An incredibly high percentage of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. That’s one of the little-known facts.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

39. “If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can’t need social approval to go forward. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing?”

— Malcolm Gladwell

40. “The people at the top don’t just work harder. They work much, much harder.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

41. “That was it! The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

42. “The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

43. “Connectors, people with a special gift for bringing the world together.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

44. “Our unconscious is really good at quick decision-making – it often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and exhaustive ways of thinking.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

45. “Emotion is contagious.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

46. “There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

47. “The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

50. “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