785 Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

We are bad lie detectors in those situations when the person we’re judging is mismatched.

Puzzle Number One: Why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face?

We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either have “it” or you don’t. But to Schoenfeld, it’s not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try. That’s what Schoenfeld attempts to teach his students. 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.

When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate circumstance.

People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.

You master mathematics if you are willing to try. That’s what Schoenfeld attempts to teach his students.

Successful people don’t do it alone. Where they come from matters. They’re products of particular places and environments.

Even the most gifted of lawyers, equipped with the best of family lessons, cannot escape the limitations of their generation.

And the Beatles didn’t recoil in horror when they were told they had to play eight hours a night, seven days a week. They jumped at the chance. Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.