Malcolm Gladwell

The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?

If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.

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

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.

Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we've done it for, I think, too long.

extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.

To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.

I have never read any Tolstoy. I felt badly about this until I read a Bill Simmons column where he confessed that he'd never seen 'The Big Lebowski.' Simmons, it should be pointed out, has seen everything. He said that everyone needs to have skipped at least one great cultural touchstone.

If I was President of the United States, I'd rather be right than interesting. If I was CEO of a company, I'd rather be right than interesting. But I'm a journalist - what journalist would rather be right than interesting?

There is an important idea in psychology: The 'just world theory,' which says that it is very important for us to convince ourselves that the world is just and things happen for a reason. That there is some elemental fairness in everything, which creates the illusion of justice.

As a writer, the best mindset is to be unafraid.

When you write about sports, you're allowed to engage in mischief. Nothing is at stake.

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.

We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability-relentl ess effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.

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

That's your responsibility as a person, as a human being - to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.

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

A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice.

Radio stations have constructed a narrow door[way], and that's because they don't understand how complex and paradoxical our snap judgments are. It's hard to measure new songs.

Does that mean we should give up? Probably. But there are two issues worth considering. The first is - is it really true that drugs destroy the integrity of the game?