785 Quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

To look closely at complex behaviors like smoking or suicide or crime is to appreciate how suggestible we are in the face of what we see and hear, and how acutely sensitive we are to even the smallest details of everyday life. That’s why social change is so volatile and so often inexplicable, because it is the nature of all of us to be volatile and inexplicable.

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7.

What’s the rest of the country like, Uncle Al?’ And he said, ‘Kiddo. When you leave New York, every place is Bridgeport.

If you play an audiotape of a yawn to blind people, they’ll yawn too.

You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.

So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it’s OK.

There’s no idea that can’t be explained to a thoughtful 14-year-old. If the thoughtful 14-year-old doesn’t get it, it is your fault, not the 14-year-old’s.

We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that-sometimes-we’re better off that way.

Human Rights Watch: “Nationwide, the rate of drug admissions to state prison for black men is thirteen times greater than the rate for white men. In ten states black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at rates that are 26 to 57 times greater than those of white men in the same state. In Illinois, for example, the state with the highest rate of black male drug offender admissions to prison, a black man is 57 times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than a white man.