Top 450 Malcolm Gladwell Quotes (2024 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

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: Practice Quotes

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

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— 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. “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

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

32. “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

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

35. “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

36. “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

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

38. “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

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

40. “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

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

— 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. “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

44. “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

45. “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

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

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

— Malcolm Gladwell

48. “The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

49. “The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

50. “Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.”

— Malcolm Gladwell