785 Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

We spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out who's going to be a good NFL quarterback, and we do a very bad job of it. We don't really know. And we also spend a lot of time trying to figure out who will be a good teacher, and we're really bad at that too. We don't know if someone is going to be a good teacher when they start teaching. So what should we do in those situations in which predictions are useless?

I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite.

Books about spies and traitors - and the congressional hearings that follow the exposure of traitors - generally assume that false-negative errors are much worse than false-positive errors.

Both Jim and I are interested in the limits of conventional decision-making. The idea that an expert will give you the best outcome -- we think that's inadequate. You need a whole palate of different strategies. We're critiquing the same narrow ideology.

Countless religious innovators over the years have played the game of establishing an identity for themselves by accentuating their otherness.

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

For every romantic possiblity, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word capable of extinguishing it.

The willingness to be self-critical in England is much greater than the willingness to be self-critical in America.

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish